41C X-Mem data file editor?

[Dave Britten]

(10-21-2020 06:14 PM)hth Wrote:  I do not think such editor exists on the HP-41 at the moment.

It would be interesting to know more about the use-case. I am not familiar with the existing editors you mention.

One thing that springs in my mind is editing numbers, the HP-41 does not allow for this at the moment. Also the display is a bit limited. I try to wrap my idea around how it may look.

My use case would be managing a few X-Mem data files where I collect some measurements throughout the day, and may need to quickly review the stored numbers or make corrections later, without a whole lot of manual GETX, SEEKPT, and SAVEX.


I'm thinking the editor could work something like this (very similar to the 17BII):

Put the filename in alpha, then XEQ "EDD" (for EDit Data) to start the editor.

The display would then show 0:XXX, with XXX being the first value in the file, e.g. what you would see if you did 0 SEEKPT, GETX. (Or perhaps I would have the editor start from the current pointer position for the file.)

SST and BST (temporarily assigned to global labels via PASN) could be used to go forward or backward through the file, displaying the item index and value in I:XXX format as you go.

To replace the value of the item currently displayed, type a new value and press ENTER (also assigned to a global label), which would overwrite the value at the current position, and redisplay the item index and value.

Moving "past" the end of the file would show ?:, and entering a value and pressing ENTER would increase the size of the file by 1 register, and append this new value.

CLx (Shift Backspace) would delete the current item by moving all following elements up one position, thus overwriting the current register, and reducing the size of the file by 1.

Some other shifted key (maybe ISG?) would perform an insert operation, increasing the size of the file by 1, moving the current and following items down by 1, and putting a 0 in the inserted space.

RTN would probably jump to the first item, and maybe another key would be assigned to jump to the end of the file for appending new items.

R/S would close the editor, and remove all the temporary user key assignments created by the program.


I don't think this would be terribly difficult to implement. Maybe I'll take a stab at it if nobody knows of an existing data file editor.