MERGE may fool you

[Steve Harrison]

On Mon, 27 Jun 1994, Robert A. Wilson wrote:

> I used MERGE after Field Day to merge the logs from station 1 and station 2:
> 
>   MERGE FD94 FD94.ST2
> 
> Unfortunately, MERGE ignores the ".ST2" part and tacks on it's own ".BIN".
> Therefore, it ended up being equivalent to:
> 
>   MERGE FD94.BIN FD94.BIN
> 
> MERGE proceeded to merge FD94.BIN with itself, completely ignoring
> the FD94.ST2 file.
> 
> I wonder if anyone else is making the same mistake and losing QSOs?
> 
> You can get around the problem by leaving everything with the ".BIN"
> extension and using different file names for each station.
> 
> 73,
> Bob, N6TV
> 
The instructions in the CT manual (V8, at least) on the use of MERGE are 
very clear and unambigous; MERGE works as advertised. Your old first file was
saved under FD94.OLD. Your second file was not touched and is still there under 
the old name (FD94.ST2, in your case). The new file with the merged logs is 
there under the original first file's name (FD94.BIN).

A caution: I found that I had two MERGE programs. One was date-stamped in 
1991 and was named MERGE386. This one did NOT merge my logs properly. I had 
two logs, one from a version 7 and the other a CT286.EXE from version 
8.47. I had to use the MERGE which is date-stamped in 1993 (and which apparently
came with my V8.42) to merge the two files successfully.

If you have not learned to save your original log files under completely 
different names so that there is no possibility that CT will touch them, 
you should. You should also store these same renamed log files, just 
before you do ANYTHING ELSE to them, on a floppy (or two, if you are 
really concerned, and use different disk types such as 3.5" and 
5-1/4") just to be safe. A simple way to keep track of logs to be merged 
is to copy and rename the copies by radio types, operators, antennas, or bands,
whatever is most unique for your logs. For our logs, one was copied and 
renamed TS120.BIN and the other IC735.BIN.

I have no idea about version 9 programs since I haven't bought V9 yet. 
73, Steve KO0U/4 <sharrison@sysplan.com>