Interesting bug/feature

[James Rea]

> Preliminary testing suggests that, in a procedure, a Select command  
> which selects an empty set will invalidate all subsequent field- 
> related commands (until a non-empty set is selected) but will allow  
> Print (and perhaps other) commands.
> 
> For example,
> 
> SelectA = ""      ; where A has no null values
> Fill B "hello"
> Print ""
> 
> will not fill field B but will print the database.  If, however,  
> SelectAll is inserted after the first line, all is well.  I know that  
> it is poor programming to omit the SelectAll command but it is  
> possible to do so and, more importantly, its omission can generate a  
> quite baffling error.  It appears that an empty result of a select  
> command has the effect of the rest of the procedure operating on an  
> empty database.

This is a feature and has been documented from day one. Surely in the
example you list above you don't want the result to be that field B in
every record is filled with "hello"? Now that would be a serious bug
that would destroy data left and right.

If you want to be more explicit about it you can do this:

select A=""
if info("empty")=false()
    field B
    fill "hello
endif
print ""

By the way, your original example

Fill B "hello"

won't work in any case, it must be

Field B
fill "hello"

Jim Rea
President, ProVUE Development

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