RE: Select on empty table return status

It sounds like one of two things is happening 1. You are selecting records which have a NULL value for the date field. You would have to use an indicator to determine whether or not you had retrieved a real value. 2. You are not really retrieving data and their is just garbage in the field. Then again, its been awhile since I have programmed 4GL As far as cash contributions go, once I convince the company I that I should be a paid employee instead of a volunteer, I might consider contributing monetarily. Will >===== Original Message From Carlos Benjamin <benj@linuxstart.com> ===== >I have an empty table created to hold open and closure dates for projects. I'm adding the 4gl code to populate this table >and am running across a strange problem. Since none of the existing projects have dates associated with them any >closure will not find a date record to update, so I decided to use a select to determine if a record exists and give the >operator the opportunity to input an open date based on their knowledge of the project and then do an insert instead of >an update. > >Here's the problem. The select on the empty table return status indicates a row was found. I put in a display to find the >open date (the column I am selecting) and I get the following garbage on the first attempt: > >Open date is :04/1ޭ''ޭ: > >Subsequent attempts display a date of 12/31/1899 until I exit the program and reenter, at which time it reverts back to >garbage. Neither of these results are valid or useful, as you can imagine, since the program goes on to try to update a >row that does not exist rather than create one. > >I have run update statistics to no avail. > >Platform is RS6000 running AIX 4.3.2 >Informix 7.31.UC2X3 > >I would appreciate the benefit of your accumulated wisdom. Cash contributions would also be nice as an early >retirement would also relieve me from this problem. > >Thanks, > >carlos > >Currently on hiatus from unemployment. >---------------------- >Do you do Linux? :) >Get your FREE @linuxstart.com email address at: http://www.linuxstart.com ------------------------------------------------------------ This e-mail has been sent to you courtesy of OperaMail, as a free service from Opera Software, makers of the award-winning Web Browser, Opera. Visit us at http://www.opera.com/ or our portal at: http://www.myopera.com/ Your free e-mail account is waiting at: http://www.operamail.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------