Interesting bug/feature

[David Thompson]

>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.

Another way to override this feature that is 
trying to save you from yourself, is to use 
info("empty") to test to see if it failed to 
select anything. Panorama (or more accurately, 
its programmer) figures that if you know that the 
selection is empty, and you still want to do the 
fill, formulafill, propagate or whatever, then 
you should be allowed to do so. What it will not 
allow you to do is *blindly* change massive 
amounts of data with the wrong records selected.

Dave