The PURGE command is used to keep the DCAT display and the "Open Data Base," "Data Base Definition," and "Application Interface" dialog listpicks up do date.
Notes: When a Data Base Definition (DBD) or an Application Interface (AI) is compiled, the text file name and the interface name is entered into the "data dictionary" file D.DIC.
The content of the D.DIC file is what provides the content for the listpicks that are available to you in the "Open Data Base," "Data Base Definition," and "Application Interface" dialogs that you get from the File Menu. Also, you can display the content of the D.DIC file with the DCAT
command.
You may later delete some of these files, but the entry remains in the D.DIC file. The PURGE command keeps the D.DIC in sync with actual file content.
The PURGE checks to see if there is a comparable file for every entry in the D.DIC. If there is no file, the entry is purged.
NOTE! If you delete all the files of a folder that contained data bases, be sure to do the PURGE before you remove the folder! If PURGE can not find the folder to check for the continued existence of a file, it will not purge that entry since it is possible that the reason that the folder is not available is because the server that has it is off-line.
If you have deleted the files and removed the folder, you will observe that you can not purge those entries. In this case, simply recreate the folder as an empty folder, do the PURGE, then delete the folder again.
