Subject Re: VARCHAR From Akshat Kapoor <akshat.kapoor@kapoorsons.in> Date Sat, 4 May 2019 18:28:30 +0530 Newsgroups dbase.getting-started Good Evening Mustansir, I have limited replies for you. For others I do not have the knowledge > 1. What  option should we go for if we were to store variable length text in a table that can be either brief description or Logical text like NEGATIVE/POSITIVE or non math NUMERIC or an image file name or PDF  file name. In dBase the only option available is character with a fixed length. varchar is usually available in RDBMS and is usually used where the length of string varies considerably and there are huge number of rows. So 100 bytes of space saved in a million rows is something but for small tables it is not of much advantage. If you can fix what you are trying to store then choose the appropriate field type like logical/numeric so that chances of error are reduced. You cannot save "truee" or "tru" to a logical field but the same value can easily be stored in a character field and may cause errors later on. So please select your field type wisely. > 2. What difference will it make if we store an image file in a binary field or we store the image file name in character field and obtain its image via image control. Never tried any of the options but storing images in dbf tables is highly discouraged in newsgroups. Store them as path to image files. Naming them will be an issue. You could try something like adding dates followed by a serial number to your image file names. Best example is ask someone to send you some images on whatsapp and then view their file names. > > 3. It is seen that A character field can be edited with Memo editior, where ENTER behaves correctly. For the same field , an ENTRYFIELD stores simply the text whereas Memo editor rearranges this text with inclusion of ENTER key placement. However other formating options do not work. Can we use Character field to store formating codes and other control codes as we do in memo field. I have never used memo fields in my entire programming experience and hence no comments. On a side note In plus 12 there is an option of richedit as control in form. You can try that But can it be linked to dbf file fields is not known to me. I have not tried it. > 4. For a table in db4, the memo file kept records of only those records whose memo field content were not empty. Is this same  for db7 table Again no idea Regards Akshat