Will,

Not to disparage the Hacker's Guide, but I recollect discussions here generally leaning away from the Hacker's recommended procedure. In particular I recollect Doug Hennig(sp?) mentioning that he had never experienced a problem with PACK itself. That combined with the product documentation on this and my experience gives me confidence in PACK. I think that we haven't heard the whole story from the originator.

I note that a new Hacker's is in the works. I expect that there will be some revisions where old chestnuts are replaced by newer advice, and I bet that the PACK question and the TAG on DELETED() will be two such areas. In a book so voluminous there are bound to be some, and I don't at all see a problem with that.

Cheers


>Yes I agree.. in theory,
>But there have been quite a few discussions regarding all this over the years and I think the general consensus is not to use pack (Hackers guide confirms this)
>Will
>
>>To Sheraz really (I cc'ed him/her)
>>
>>Something doesn't seem quite right here.
>>
>>PACK is supposed to make a copy into a new file, then delete the old (original) file.
>>So IF the operation failed while the PACK was in progress (which would seem to be the case since the NOT ENOUGH SPACE message occurred during its run (or did it????), then everything should have been left as it was in the original file.
>>
>>I think we need more information here, most likely along the lines of precisely what actions were taken immediately after this message was seen. Also, confirmation that the message did, indeed, arise during the PACK itself.
>>
>>Jim
>>
>>>>I HAD A TABLE OF VFP 5.0. I RUN THE COMMAND PACK AND THE MESSAGE APPEARS THAT THERE IS NO ENOUGH SPACE ON THE SERVER. AND THEN THERE WERE 0 RECORDS SHOWN IN THE TABLE.
>>>>
>>>>THE PHYSICAL FILESIZE OF THE TABLE SHOWS THAT THERE SHOULD BE ABOUT 23000 RECORDS.
>>>>
>>>>PLEASE HELP ME FINDING A WAY TO RECOVER RECORDS FROM THIS TABLE.
>>>>
>>>>WAITING FOR AN EARLY REPLY.
>>>
>>>As Hilmar said.. revert to a backup it's probably easier
>>>
>>>There are also a number of .DBF fix tools floating around.. I remember there was one in Norton utilities
>>>Or try opening the table in Excel
>>>
>>>Last resort?
>>>Look up "table file structure" in help.
>>>
>>>Fact is it's probably dead
>>>
>>>P.S. You should never run Pack on a real table for exactly this reason. select from or copy to with cdx instead