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From: pt0o+@andrew.cmu.edu (Percival Tieng)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: dBASE III+ problem
Message-ID: <QVaQkvy00XoIAtg0Av@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: Thu, 12-Nov-87 09:56:59 EST
Article-I.D.: andrew.QVaQkvy00XoIAtg0Av
Posted: Thu Nov 12 09:56:59 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 14-Nov-87 19:06:08 EST
Organization: Carnegie Mellon University
Lines: 48
In-Reply-To: <190@brl-tbd.ARPA>



 I know there has been a lot of replies to this problem and I would like to
toss in 
my hat and give my fair share...

One of the solutions proposed was from E.Roepe:

  STORE SPACE(8) TO DBNAME
  @5,10 SAY "Enter Database Name" GET DBNAME
  READ
  USE &DBNAME
 
What I would like to add is the fact that when you use the command:

	STORE SPACE(8) TO DBNAME

you are actually limiting the input space to 8 characters.  

This might pose problems when you have to specify paths or even 
drive specifications.  The same is true when you say 

	datab='test.dbf'

A better way is to assign an arbitrary length to the character variable
datab.

	STORE SPACE(10) TO DATAB   && if we allow different drive specs

or even

	STORE SPACE(20) TO DATAB   && to allow for subdirectories

If you wish to assign a default as in datab = 'test.dbf':
use:

	STORE 'test.dbf' + SPACE(12) TO DATAB

space(12) to set the length of datab to 20.

To store an arbritrary filename ( maybe assigned as default earlier in the
program )
to a character variable ( which we want to retain as having a length of 20 ),

	STORE LEFT( deffilename + space(20), 20 ) TO DATAB

where deffilename may be of any length.  

Hope this all helps...