does CLONing = CLEANing ?

[ChrisE]

I haven't been around this forum long enough to know whether this has been raised before, but I have noticed an interesting phenomenon:

I had a number of troublesome scripts [usually with Scriptmaker calling an AppleScript to the Print Center (aka "Printer Setup Utility" now we have Panther] which were returning all kinds of errors; "Can't find application dictionary", "Application not running", etc etc

Then, by chance, I made a clone copy of my master database yesterday. When I run the clone, every script which had been giving trouble ran perfectly !

So, does anyone know ? Does cloning=cleaning ?

[Philland]

No, cloning means just that, making a copy. If cloning a base cleans up all the funky scripts, I'm going to start cloning all of my databases though. I certainly have enough scripts that could use it.

Phil

[Lee Smith]

Hi Chris,

I started to answer this the other day, but decided that any comment I would make would end up being speculative in nature. It sounds like your file had some kind of corruption in it, my guess would be either, corrupted data in a field, or a corrupted layout. However, because corruption is very fuzzy in nature (technical term there) on what causes corruption, keep in mind it could sill have been something other these two things.

Cloning a file does remove any unused data blocks, and it possible that in doing so, you removed what ever was causing the problem.

However, I wouldn't trust these files to not repeat the problem. What I would do is:

1). Use a clean backup and import my data into it. By clean, I mean a copy that has never crashed.

Or

2). Consider this an opportunity to redo my files, by giving them that face lift I had been putting off. This is the time to implement the designs changes, add functions, change file structure, etc., that I have been wanting to do, but have been waiting to do on some rainy day. Guess what it is raining outside.

HTH

Lee