mark lewis wrote in a message to Peter Barley:
 PB> Type UserFile : Record
 PB>         UniqueID  : longint;
 PB>         FirstName : string[20];
 PB>         SurName   : string[25];
 PB>         Fidonet   : String[];     {<= ***** Suggestions of
 PB> length please}
 ml> what is the fidonet variable used for? the network address? if so,
 ml> 65535:65535/65535.65535 is (at this time) the largest FTN style
 ml> address... 
You're forgetting the 5th dimension. Not widely supported, but still a 
standard and it is supported by some programs (how correctly is another 
matter!). I have no idea on the length but it's long enough to hold 
'fidonet.org' (probably 8.3)
 ml> YYYY - four digit year
[..]
 ml> with the above, you don't have to worry about anything like the
 ml> Year2000 problem until the year 9999 when the year goes over to a
 ml> five digit length ;-) 
Naughty naughty! You should know by now that to use this echo you *have* to 
make all your programs correctly support all future possible dates, so you 
need a null-terminated string with the ability to become infinite in length 
to correctly store the date. In 20 trillion years they might still be using 
your program or programs based on it and the universe could end if your 
program suddenly fails because it can't handle 
1/1/1,345,256,457,345,674,784,235,657
[Hey, if I've gotta make my programs which only use the date as a 
non-critical file-naming method (ie it doesn't matter if the Date -> Unix 
conversion is broken as long as it gives a unique name for that month) work 
to accurately detect wether or not Y4K is a leap-year (currently under debate 
AFAIK) then you gotta make sure your more critical date-routines work for an 
infinite number of years! :-) :-) :-) :-) 
Cya..
Dave
Save your BBS! Join INTBBS_WK now! 
--- timEd 1.10
---------------