🚀 go-pugleaf

   Last week I posted a note about losing an Excel file - although
the file remained intact as far as my disk sector editor was
concerned, Excel could not read it without crashing.
    A few people sent me mail, saying that they had had
that same problem and requesting that I send the Excel
file format if I find it out. I haven't (nobody volunteered it,
anyway), but I did a little experiment, saving a file in all 4
Excel formats:
	File	Time		Preserve	Readable
File	Size	to Read		Formats &	via Sector
Type	(char)	In		Formulas	Editor
Excel	16830	 5.91 sec	Yes		No
SYLK	16392	27.22		Yes		Yes
WKS	14370	23.39		Yes(mostly)	No
Text	 3236	13.75		No		Yes

   By "readable" I mean you could crank up Fedit and read the numbers
straight off the screen. The SYLK format is documented in various
Microsoft manuals.
   The results imply that if you have a database that is very
important to you, you might want to keep it in SYLK or Text
format in case Excel decides to make it unreadable.

-- 
Wiley Sanders, Civil Engineering Dept, UT-Austin
secret NSA CIA anti Soviet Iran terrorist nuclear drug decoder ring
                                     - take THAT, NSA line-eater!