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From: lpm@lanl.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc
Subject: Re: dBase III with PC DOS 3.1
Message-ID: <463@lanl.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 29-Jan-86 12:14:29 EST
Article-I.D.: lanl.463
Posted: Wed Jan 29 12:14:29 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Feb-86 06:11:15 EST
References: <2163@hcrvax.UUCP>
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lines: 35

> I have heard that dBase III will not run properly under DOS 3.1.
> Does anyone know if this is true?  If so, what problems exist?
> 
> Please post any information about this.
> 
> 

Since you asked for a posting rather than e-mail, I am posting.

I use dBase III and DOS 3.1; I have found one bug that I can not
seem to get around, and no one around here has any clues as to the
problem.  It occurs when I have two files open and am selecting them
in different procedure files.  My end product will use the Clipper
compiler, though, so I just started using Clipper earlier in the development
process than I had intended.  I have noticed that the display is
slightly different in dBase and Clipper, and there are a few minor
differences in some of the functions at the "boundaries", for lack of
a better word.  For example, I use at() to tell me where a substring
is found, and then substr() to extract a substring from a different
string, but in the same position that at() told me.  In dBase, if at()
returned a 0, then substr() would also return a zero, even though 0 is
not really a good argument for substr().  Clipper does not do this, so I had
to code a little more carefully to test for a zero return from at().
Another difference that took a while to find was in the need for
public variables for locate/continue loops.  If the locate is done
in one procedure and the continue is done from another one, dBase is
quite content.  But Clipper requires that the variable searched on
in locate be public, which is not surprising, but it is not documented.

I suspect that these differences are really differences; I do not think
that they are because dBase does not work with DOS 3.1.  And I suspect
that the bug I found would be there under DOS 2.1, but I have not
tried it.  Perhaps I should.

Laurie McGavran