Re: variables in declare statement

Austin Castro wrote: > I have a problem with a 4gl program. The program is receiving two > arguments, a beginning date and an end date . The following declaring > statement fails on the attempt to open. > > Let bobp = arg_val(1) > Let eobp = arg_val(2) > > Declare acct_cur cursor for > Select account_number from customer_account > Where (close_date between eobp and eobp) > Order by account_number> > I get error -217 when openning the cursor. When I hard code the > dates, I don't get any error. I know that I can work around this > by preparing the statement in a string but I want to know why I'm > getting this error. IIRC, -217 is 'column not found' or words to that effect. I note that your BETWEEN clause as written mentions eobp twice and does not mention bobp at all. I'd debug the problem by checking on the string that's in the generated C code if you're using the c-code compiler, or in the object file if you're using the p-code compiler. The usual cause of the trouble is that something you expected to be treated as a variable isn't -- is eobp in scope when the cursor is declared? Does the customer_account table have both an account_number column and a close_date column? Contrary to what 'thillick@cscsi.com' said, you can have DATE variables used in a SELECT statement without using PREPARE, and you do not need to protect the values with quotes in this context. -- Jonathan Leffler (jleffler@informix.com, jleffler@earthlink.net) Guardian of DBD::Informix v0.60 -- see http://www.perl.com/CPAN #include <disclaimer.h>