Thread: Deleting Record in Binary File without Temporary File

There is no standard way for you to make an existing file one record shorter.

There are various OS specific options though.

TRUNCATE(2) Linux Programmer's Manual TRUNCATE(2)

NAME
truncate, ftruncate - truncate a file to a specified length

SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h>
#include <sys/types.h>

int truncate(const char *path, off_t length);
int ftruncate(int fd, off_t length);

Oh. The assignment I got is to be done on TurboCrap and so I wouldn't be able to use <unistd.h>. I'll read more about truncate and try another version of my code on C::B

- a specific record value that indicates that a record has been deleted (as phantomotap suggests).

I'll use a "-1 \0" as an identifier for a deleted record and add a condition in "Display Records" to not display any records with "-1 \0"

- a separate (and much shorter) index file containing a list of which records are valid, and which are deleted.

This seems interesting. I'll implement this in C::B as a side project. Thanks for the idea!