Put

Writes data from a variable to a disk file.

Syntax

file.Put Data, [Recnumber]

The parts of the Put statement syntax are described in the following table.

Remarks

Data written with Put is usually read from a file with Get.

The first record or byte in a file is at position 1, the second record or byte is at position 2, and so on. If you omit recnumber, the next record or byte after the last Get or Put statement or pointed to by the last Seek function is written.

For files opened in Random mode, the following rules apply:

• If the length of the data being written is less than the length specified in the Len clause of the Open statement, Put writes subsequent records on record-length boundaries. The space between the end of one record and the beginning of the next record is padded with the existing contents of the file buffer. Because the amount of padding data cannot be determined with any certainty, it is generally a good idea to have the record length match the length of the data being written. If the length of the data being written is greater than the length specified in the Len clause of the Open statement, an error occurs.
• If the variable being written is a Variant of a numeric type, Put writes 2 bytes identifying the VarType of the Variant and then writes the variable. For example, when writing a Variant of VarType 3, Put writes 6 bytes: 2 bytes identifying the Variant as VarType 3 (Long) and 4 bytes containing the Long data. The record length specified by the Len clause in the Open statement must be at least 2 bytes greater than the actual number of bytes required to store the variable.

You can use the Put statement to write a Variant array to disk, but you cannot use Put to write a scalar Variant containing an array to disk. You also cannot use Put to write objects to disk.

• If the variable being written is a Variant of VarType 8 (String), Put writes 2 bytes identifying the VarType, 2 bytes indicating the length of the string, and then writes the string data. The record length specified by the Len clause in the Open statement must be at least 4 bytes greater than the actual length of the string.
• If the variable being written is a dynamic array, Put writes a descriptor whose length equals 2 plus 8 times the number of dimensions, that is, 2 + 8 * NumberOfDimensions. The record length specified by the Len clause in the Open statement must be greater than or equal to the sum of all the bytes required to write the array data and the array descriptor. For example, the following array declaration requires 118 bytes when the array is written to disk.
• For files opened in Binary mode, all of the Random rules apply, except:
  • The Len clause in the Open statement has no effect. Put writes all variables to disk contiguously; that is, with no padding between records.