Microsoft KB Archive/21180

Uses for the REBUILD Utility

PSS ID Number: Q21180 Article last modified on 11-16-1992

2.00 2.10 2.20 MS-DOS

Summary: The REBUILD utility allows you to do the following: 1. You can generate new key files from Indexed data files or regenerate corrupted key files. 2. You can compress a data file. Free space is created during the normal record processing using DELETE and REWRITE statements, especially when variable length records are used. Data file compression removes this free space for the data file. 3. You can view the data dictionary. Whenever MS COBOL or REBUILD create an Indexed data file, they also build a data dictionary, i.e., a binary record description located at the beginning of the data file. REBUILD can use a data dictionary to rebuild key files. 4. You can reformat MS COBOL Version 1.x ISAM files to the Version 2.x format.

Copyright Microsoft Corporation 1992.