Subject Re: Another problem (non-grid)
From Akshat Kapoor <akshat.kapoor@kapoorsons.in>
Date Sun, 17 Dec 2017 13:46:18 +0530
Newsgroups dbase.getting-started

On 17/12/2017 04:10, Charlie wrote:
> Thanks for the help on the grid problem.
>
> OK now I am wondering how someone would program this.  Should be pretty easy but I was on the golf course today and am to golfed out to think!
>
> So I have a character field.  I am organizing it now so it will look presentable.  I have been using 1,2,3,...12 and now I want to show this in a logical order.  So I would like all characters to look something like 001, 002, 003,...012 so they make a more logical order.
>
> I have many records that are of the first example.  Would there be an easy loop to fix them to resemble the second example?
>
> Thanks again!!!!   Happy holidays everyone!
>

Hi Charlie,

This is just to add to Mervyn's methods
?str(5,4,0,"0")
?str(val("  5"),4,0,"0")
?str(val("5   "),4,0,"0")

all give "0005" as the output

So your data is " 5 " / "  5" / "5  " the resultant order will be the same.

If you allow editing in a grid it will be difficult to control your
input to any one of the above formats.

Check OLH for str() the fourth optional parameter ("0" string 0 ) is
used to fill the empty spaces if the generated character is short of the
required length.

You can also create an index on this

use yourTable excl
index on str(val(yourField),4,0,"0") TAG yourField

You should get the desired results.

Regards
Akshat