Re: Lots of 1-char fields on form

bryan@carsinfo.com (Bryan Klopfenstein) writes: >I have a customer who is trying to create a form for a table which has >48 1-character fields. This is using Perform, but I have this feeling >that the same problem may exist in 4GL forms also. Since it doesn't >seem to be case sensitive, letters "a" thru "z" only cover 26 fields. >Even if digits work (we haven't tried it), this only covers 36 fields. >We haven't tried launching into other characters such as punctuation, >in hopes of a better solution (that won't require trial and error to >avoid syntax problems). Does anyone know a way to specify this many >fields of 1-character? >I recall having seen this discussion in the past, but I am drawing >a complete blank now that we hit the issue ourselves. Can someone >remind me of a way to handle this? >-- >Bryan Klopfenstein bryan@carsinfo.com >CARS Information Systems Corp. >Cincinnati, OH Standard Disclaimers Apply There is an unbreakable limit of 26 1-char fields on a given form (a-z). Capitals, numbers, special characters don't work. The (admitedly kludgy) workaround is to put a 2-char field on the screen, and reference it as below: SCREEN { ... [a0] ... } ATTRIBUTES ... a0 = tablename.columname, PICTURE="X ", ...; ... AUTONEXT and all other attributes will work, and the user is allowed to input any character into the first column position, and the 2nd is forced to be a blank space, so the cursor won't enter it for inserts or updates. Inserts/Update to the table will work fine, since the engine will truncate, snipping off the unneeded blank. To make the screen a bit less klunky, hide delimiters: ... INSTRUCTIONS DELIMITERS " " ================ Dennis J. Pimple Informix CSE / Denver