Reading HAL Databases

HAL databases are stored in a Fox Pro format. Why would anyone want to read those databases? Maybe to script the creation of tasks, macros & events? This post will get you halfway there - reading the databases. First off, you'll need Perl. Get ActivePerl if you don't have Perl already. After installing it, open a command prompt and start the package manager by running ppm. At the ppm prompt, type search DBD-XBase, then type install. After it finishes, type exit and now you're ready to write some code.

This is a very simple script that takes 1 argument (the .DBF filename) and dumps out the contents of the file, field by field.

# dumpdb.pl
use XBase;
$\ = "\n";
$, = ' ';
my $table = new XBase $ARGV[0] or die XBase->errstr;
@fields= $table->field_names;
for (0 .. $table->last_record) {
    foreach $field (@fields) {
        my ($deleted,$val) = $table->get_record($_, $field);
        print "$field = $val" unless $deleted;
    }
    print "";
}
$table->close;

usage: perl dumpdb.pl FILENAME.DBF