Restarted work on mergedb.for. Decided I was taking the wrong approach,
so the interruption was probably a GOOD THING.

The process now is to read in the header lines AND line numbers from
the main database, and to then process the incoming database one record
at a time. It's more logical and haivng the line numbers will speed
things up enormously (well it has done on previous occasions).

The biggest immediate problem was the loss of an hour's edits to the
program, when the network died.. no explanations from anyone, I hope
it's not a return to last year's troubles.

(some weeks later)

well, it compiles OK, and even runs enthusiastically. However there are
loads of bugs that I now have to fix. Eeeeek. Timesrunningouttimesrunningout.

(even later)

Getting there.. still ironing out glitches and poor programming.

25. Wahey! It's halfway through April and I'm still working on it. This
surely is the worst project I've ever attempted. Eeeek. I think the main
problem is the rather nebulous concept of the automatic updater. If I
hadn't had to write it to add the 1991-2006 temperature file to the 'main'
one, it would probably have been a lot simpler. But that one operation has
proved so costly in terms of time, etc that the program has had to bend
over backwards to accommodate it. So yes, in retrospect it was not a
brilliant idea to try and kill two birds with one stone - I should have
realised that one of the birds was actually a pterodactyl with a temper
problem.

Success!
crua6[/cru/cruts/version_3_0/db/testmergedb] ./mergedb