>>>If I were to write the path to the registry will
>>>this slow down the load time to start the exe,
>>>or is it so minimal that it will not matter?
>>>
>
>>Writing to registry, instead of config.fpw you're beating soft coding.
>
>You only need to write to the registry once (unless a path changes).
>Then you just read the registry each time the program starts,
>just as you would read the path from a dbf.
>
>The advantage of the registry is that you won't have
>to have assume a path to the dbf that holds the path info.
>The registry is always there and accessable.
>
>Then just take what the registry says and put it into
>SET PATH TO ®istry-variable
>
>It is still soft coding the path.
>
>But reading the registry is slower then reading a dbf.
>How much slower? Probably not too noticable unless
>the registry has grown tremendously over time.
Gene,
Registry way might be good for enduser. But in development I sometimes need to change paths quickly and/or copy/move all app tree. There reg kills me, especially when it grows (now mine is about 4MB and I only do a search in it when I need recovery). For those reasons + set path .. coding or changing path= in config.fpw needs no good programming skills I prefer config.fpw way. Correcting a reg entry is much harder than correcting a config.fpw entry also. I can even tell my clients how to change it on phone (soft coding for users - to me it would always be soft). And what I mean "beating soft coding" was that. Sorry for terminology. Neverthless you're right it could be done via registry.
Cetin