Why Zero-Length .SBR Files Are Left on the Disk by the PWB

MS-DOS    | OS/2

The information in this article applies to:

• Microsoft Programmer's Workbench for MS-DOS, versions 1.0 and 1.1
• Microsoft Programmer's Workbench for OS/2, versions 1.0 and 1.1

SUMMARY

When using the Source Browser functionality within the Programmer's WorkBench (PWB) versions 1.0 and 1.1, you can expect to have zero-length .SBR files on your disk. This is by design of the PWBRMAKE utility.

MORE INFORMATION

PWBRMAKE.EXE is a utility that converts the .SBR files created by the compiler for each program module into a single database file that can be read by the Programmer's WorkBench (PWB) Source Browser. The resulting Source Browser database file has the extension .BSC.

When a Source Browser database (a .BSC file) is built from .SBR files, the .SBR files are truncated to zero length to save disk space since they can be quite large. .SBR files are truncated to zero length, rather than being deleted, because PWBRMAKE performs incremental updates to the database and, therefore, needs the time and date stamp from the files.

When you rebuild part of your project, new .SBR files are built for those modules. Each .SBR file that has not been re-created during a build is included as a zero-length file. This tells PWBRMAKE that the file has no new contribution to make to the database, so no update of that part of the database is required.