[Kst] [Bug 116461] getdata borks when the first field in the format file isn't (ASCII) alphabetically the first field.

[Ted Kisner]

On Tuesday 15 November 2005 19:02, Barth Netterfield wrote:
| So, the rule that we chose was:
|         The first field in 'format' is always written last, and its length
| is used to define the length of the dirfile.  The length of any other field
| will be ignored.

I guess this is just a matter of my misunderstanding (from 2003 to present) 
the design goals of dirfile formats.  Your intention was that all fields in a 
given directory should have the same number of frames.  Period.  

I thought it was a great way of grouping raw data files (of arbitrary length), 
that I could read/write to at will however I wished.

So given your design goals, the current behaviour is correct.  In principle if 
I have some shorter length data files, they should go in a separate dirfile.

Ok, well, I'm sorry that I have caused you all to rehash some ancient design 
decisions.  I'll go and stop abusing dirfile in my work ;-)

-Ted