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From: AR.HFN@forsythe.stanford.edu (Hooshyar Naraghi)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Clipper/dBase Seek Question
Message-ID: <4480@lindy.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 23 Aug 89 05:59:41 GMT
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In article <238@fltk.UUCP>,
dnb@fltk.UUCP (David Buonomo) writes:
>I have a .DBF file indexed on 2 numeric fields of 4 and 6 digits respectively.
>More specifically, the index is built by:
>
>                index on str(invnum,4)+str(seqnum,6) to idx_file
>
>I would like to do a seek specifying only the first index.  I am currently
>unable to accomplish this (result of seek is EOF).  Is this possible to do
>and if so, how?

Unfortunately you did not specify what your SEEK command was,
however, I am going to guess what it is by looking at your INDEX
command.

The STR function takes the numeric field and if the value of this
field is LESS THAN 4 DIGITS, say 123, 10, or 5, then it will add
leading blanks to make it 4 characters long when returning a
character-type data.

For example, suppose you have a record whose INVNUM field has value
of numeric 123.  If you SEEK "123" you will not find this record.
However, if you SEEK " 123", the pointer will point to the record.
Please note there was a blank space before 123 (in character type).

The best thing to do is to index the file by removing the leading
blanks.  LTRIM function will accomplish that.  I know dBXL and FOX
and of course dBASEIII+ support this function, but I am not sure
about clipper since I do not use it.  The command looks like:

INDEX on LTRIM(STR(invnum,4)) + LTRIM(STR(seqnum,6)) to idx_file

Now, if you seek "123", the pointer will point to the record whose
INVNUM value is 123.

I hope this can be useful to you.  Thanks for your patience.
Hooshyar Naraghi
Stanford University
AR.HFN@forsythe.stanford.edu
(415) 723-3790