[Info-vax] Help with DECBasic: reading a record in an INDEX SEQ file using a compound key

[Paul Sture]

In article 
<768fc126-2441-4edc-83b9-6e71e2de0272 at m3g2000yqf.googlegroups.com>,
 Hein RMS van den Heuvel <heinvandenheuvel at gmail.com> wrote:

> Do as Fran writes, or make the key explicit
> 
> for example
> 
> PAN = sMyPAN
> DOB = sDOB
> mykey$ = PAN + DOB
> GET #1,  KEY #0 EQ mykey$, REGARDLESS
> 
> Notice how  I replaces FIND + GET with a direct call to GET.
> That saves a trip into RMS.
> There are  times and places where FIND should be used, but they are
> relatively rare.

FIND + GET is something that I remember a RSTS BASIC programmer banging 
on about many years ago for performance reasons, and I never understood 
why he got so heated about it.

I have a feeling its heritage was in batch processing where the aim was 
simply to error flag a record which contained a non-existant key to a 
master file.

-- 
Paul Sture