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                       F i l e    I n f o r m a t i o n

* DESCRIPTION
Letter explaining DECODE.PAS.
Requires: Turbo Pascal 2.0, 3.0. Author: Rick Solomon. Version T1.0

* ASSOCIATED FILES
DECODE.PAS
DECODE88.PAS
DECODE.TXT

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            Rick Solomon SOLORCAM6K/I000547
            Exhibition Place
            Toronto, Ontario
            Canada M6K 3C3
            416-593-7551

I know that the rules state that entries must be complete programs,
but a complete program can't be written to use the two versions of
the function I've written until some very specific information about
the application in which one of them is to be used is established.

FUNCTION DECODE is used in Turbo programs which read files created
by BASIC programs and rewrite them in TurboPascal format. Integers
can be read as is, and strings can be read easily, provided we re-
member to read the BASIC string as an ARRAY [1..N] OF CHAR before
converting it to STRING [N]. Real numbers are a problem, however.
As explained in the source code, they have to be read as an
ARRAY [1..4] OF BYTE and converted to REAL by using DECODE. The
routines themselves are quite simple, but it took me a long time to
figure them out. You wouldn't believe the number of 'experts' around
Toronto who didn't have any idea on how to do this task.

Listing DECODE.PAS is the general form of the function and will work
with any version of TurboPascal; DECODE88.PAS will not work with
TURBO-87 or TURBOBCD.