Invalid Flag Question

[Alan Morgan]

Hi all,

My requirements state the following in the data file format:

1 byte flag. 00 implies valid record, 0xFF implies deleted record

So each record has a 1 byte flag at that start of it.
I was doing something like this:

<CODE>
private final static int INVALID_FLAG = 0xFF

extract from read(..)

int flag = temp[0];
if(flag == INVALID_FLAG){
throw new RecordNotFoundException("Record number " + recNo
+ " was not found");

}

extract from delete(..)

randomAccessFile.write(this.INVALID_FLAG);


</CODE>

However upon debugging I found that an invalid (deleted) record
was returning -1.
So the check in read was returning false even if the record was deleted
If I change the invalid flag declarartion to

private final static int INVALID_FLAG = -1

then it all works ok.

Firstly am I missing here ?
And secondly is it ok to do it this way ?

Thanks.

[Alan Morgan]

Doh.

Of course the easy answer is rather than check if flag == INVALID_FLAG all I have to do is check if flag != VALID_FLAG.

And given that VALID_FLAG is set to 00 there is no problem with that.

I've been looking at this for too long

[Tinky]

Hi Alan,

Since the length of the flag field in your database is one byte, you should use the following to declare your flag:

private final static byte INVALID_FLAG = (byte)0xFF;

The value of INVALID_FLAG is now -1 and you can now use your original if-statement to test whether a record is valid or not.

Regard, Erwin