<FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>A while back, when I worked in developer support, I got a call from another developer who </FONT><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>wanted to take some data from a text file and read it into his application so that </FONT><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>he could pass it to one of our application's APIs. I expained to him that we don't </FONT><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>support development issues outside the direct use of our APIs, but I decided to hear him </FONT><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>out anyway.</FONT>
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3> </FONT></o:p><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>He told me he had a background in VB, but he insisted on using fread() and C to read a text file. </FONT><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>"I can't figure out what to do with the void ptr," he said. </FONT>
<o:p><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3> </FONT></o:p><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>I decided to try to sidestep the issue and recommended that if wasn't comfortable with the standard C library, </FONT><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>he could try formatting his data in XML or a CSV text file so he could use a higher level library, like MSXML or the Excel API, </FONT><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>to get the data out of the file. On and on, he insisted on using fread().</FONT>
<o:p><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3> </FONT></o:p><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Frustrated, I said I'd get back to him, and I decided to re-tell this story to one of my co-workers. As soon as I got to </FONT>
<FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>"format your data in XML," my co-worker interrupted--</FONT>
<o:p><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3> </FONT></o:p><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">"XML? The problem with XML is that you have to use COM. [I hadn't even mentioned the MSXML COM library to him yet.] </FONT></FONT><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>And then what happens when COM breaks? Then, where are you left!?"</FONT>