INDEX OUT OF BOUNDS (0) - Help me plz!

[Dr.Bonkhead]

Hi people!

I am Dr. Bonkhead TFM and I'm a new member here. I got the following
problem using RomCenter 2.62 on an AMD Athlon 2600 XP+ running Win
XP...

My mate Mensk and me are coding a tool for generating new datfiles
from folder-contents containing correctly tagged files. We are working
on it since some months and it already generates good datafiles for use
with Romcenter. After using Romcenter for a long time I've recognized
a really strange behaviour when using it (RC):

When a dat-file contains the same game but in different versions like for
example NAME (19xx)()(), NAME (19xx)()()[a], NAME (19xx)()()[a2], it gives
me an error-message "INDEX OUT OF BOUNDS (0)". I've had the
same problem with dat-files from TOSEC that I've generated with their
online database creator v0.5.

Does anybody know about this problem or has a solution how to fix it?
I tagged a whole bunch of Amiga ADFs with an older version of TOSEC's
datfiles and when using the new generated dat it gives me this strange
error what makes me mad cauz I then have to manually take out files
from the read-in folder until the error doesn't appear and this takes a
very, very long time...

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance and regards!

[RomCenter]

Hi
Try to use the 1.70 beta 1 and tell me if it solves the problem.
If not, please tell me exactly when the error raise (during datafile loading ? during file scanning ?)

[Dr.Bonkhead]

Sorry for delay but had much work over the week...

The problem occurs when Romcenter starts scanning the folders.
Usually I quit RC then, restart it and the dialogue appears again after
RC starts scanning the folder, but at least I then have the option to
see the path inside Romcenter. I then manually remove file by file
from the path (outside RC, in the Windows explorer) and refresh the
path inside RC until a file is shown. I have to repeat this until all files,
that generate the mentioned error message, are removed.

My first try to solve the problem was to use older versions of RC, for
example v2.5, v2.6, v2.61 and now the beta version 2.70b1. I am not
sure if you meant v1.70 in your reply or if it was just a misspelling...

The problem first occured when I started using datfiles from TOSEC
that were generated with their online dat creator and only those dats
generate this problem, no matter which version of RC I use.

The generated datfiles were created using the option "Generate RC
file", so I am not sure if the problem maybe lies in this. I compared
the headers of old datfiles I have with those new created ones but
there are no differences. Everything seems to be ok with it.

I also recognized, that the problem only occurs if I have two or more
files inside my path, that are almost the same, but are in alternate
versions. Means that if you have for example "Name (19xx)(Vendor)"
and "Name (19xx)(Vendor)[a]" in the same path, the error occurs.

I tried to read in the datfile inside the application that my mate and
me are working on and everything worked fine. After exporting the
file to a RC-compatible datfile nothing changed, the error-message
still shows up.

I am really clueless what else I could do now and really don't want
to try sorting out datfiles containing 10k or more entries...

Thanks for your help and best regards!

[Gucek]

It's very probable that the problem lies not within RomCenter, but within the generated DATfile.
Remember that TOSEC online DatGen is still work-in-progress - lately I personally had similar problem, but it was solved later. You don't mention which TOSEC DAT caused this trouble, but not so many days ago it was corrected for some Atari and Spectrum dats.
Please try to generate & download same dat again and if it's still not working - please post here (or on TOSEC forum) which dat is it.
There actually is little RC fault too - when names in dat are duplicated (i.e. the datfile is erronous) - it gives this quite cryptic message.
When it comes to DATs that you generate - I would first double-check if you didn't place same name (e.g. forggotting to add [a]s, or something) in some of datafile columns.

[RomCenter]

Can you give me the name of the datafile which raise this error ?

As you may know, RC 2.70b1 (not 1.70 ) have a new resource pass in the datafile scanner, and maybe some errors in datafiles can produce exceptions in rc. This has to be fixed.

[Dr.Bonkhead]

First of all a big thanks for your replies, Gucek & Erik!
The concerned datfiles are the Commodore C-64 dats.
I meanwhile came to the point where I am sure that the
problem lies in the dats, although I generated the dats
again and when I leave out alternatives (like [a], [o],
[cr], etc.) it seems to work correct, but what to do then?
I got so many of these files that are from these categories
(trained versions, alternatives, etc.) that I can't use RC to
classify those...

Let's see what solutions can be found with your help
Thanks again and keep up the good work!