RE: SQLin 4GLNot Working ......

John, as you have just discovered, you need to prepare statements if you want to use dynamic table or column names. Apart from the "INTO" clause, variables can only used where expressions are allowed, and even then you must be careful not to confuse existing column names with 4gl variables or variables you may have declared in your module. What I mean to say is that, apart for trying to use table cTable, your first select statement is wrong in another respect: it will not test whether customer.status="DEAD", but that <some_integer>="DEAD", where <some_integer> is the contents of the 4gl status variable at the time the select statement is executed. In general you should * avoid using name of reserved words or system variables for column names * or prefix the column name with the table name * Or at least put a @ in front of the column name Many a programmer has been baffled by some silly error like that :-) Moreover, you don't need a foreach. An open/fetch/close will make clear that your is a singleton select. Makes you code more understandable. Ciao, Marco PS: please turn off HTML posting ____________________________________________________________________________ rem radioterapia, which I immeritately manage, seldom agrees with what I say marco greco (Catania, Italy) Work: marcog@ctonline.it rem radioterapia 39 95 447828 fax 446558 (was mar.greco@agora.stm.it) Achea 39 95 503117 --- On Sun, 02 Feb 1997 01:38:59 -0500 John Cokos <jcokos@ix.netcom.com> wrote: ------------BA32E9F5BB31 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii I'm having trouble with the following statement.... LET cTable = "customers" SELECT count(*) INTO nCount FROM cTable WHERE status = "DEAD" I get an error stating that cTable is not in the database. I have tried the following, with the same results. LET cSQL = "SELECT count(*) FROM ", cTable " WHERE status = ", "\\"" DEAD, "\\"" PREPARE qSQL FROM cSQL DECLARE q_cur CURSOR FOR qSQL FOREACH q_cur INTO nCount END FOREACH If I do a ... MESSAGE cSQL after the above code, the select statemente is correct (customers appears, not cTable) What am I missing here? Thanks John Cokos -- [HTML copy of message snipped] -----------------End of Original Message-----------------