Auto Increment on Date jumps to 01/20/5032

[sharonsab]

I have been using A4 & A5 since 1993 in my grooming shop to track appointments. One of my tables is just Date & Day. The Date field is auto increment and the day is calculated. Very simple. Each year I use control + enter to add 365 records, one for each date. I've been doing this for years no problem. This year I get to 04/02/2010 and the next record shows up as 01/20/5032. I tried it on my other computer with the same results. So I started a test database with just one table for dates and the same thing happens. I'm using A5 version 8 build 1980, I did run the patch I found but I still have the same problem. Has anyone had this problem. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Sharon

[Tom Cone Jr]

Re: Auto Increment on Date jumps to 01/20/5032

Sharon, you're the first person I can recall that's used auto-increment with a date type field. Perhaps others do it all the time, but I've never bumped into it or even heard about it before. I don't have an explanation for you, but have an alternative approach that could be used if nothing simpler is suggested.

1) your field names duplicate the names of two alpha five built-in functions DATE() and DAY(). I've found it best to avoid duplicating function names when naming tables, fields, or other objects in an Alpha Five applciation. So, if it were me, I'd rename these two fields in the table structure, after first making a good backup.

2) next, I'd abandon the use of the auto-increment field rule and use a simple script to insert the new records you need each year. The script would enter one record after another, and change (increment) the desired field values as it goes. We can help you write such a script if you wish.

-- tom

[avatar1999]

Re: Auto Increment on Date jumps to 01/20/5032

Sharon, you're the first person I can recall that's used auto-increment with a date type field. Perhaps others do it all the time, but I've never bumped into it or even heard about it before. I don't have an explanation for you, but have an alternative approach that could be used if nothing simpler is suggested.

1) your field names duplicate the names of two alpha five built-in functions DATE() and DAY(). I've found it best to avoid duplicating function names when naming tables, fields, or other objects in an Alpha Five applciation. So, if it were me, I'd rename these two fields in the table structure, after first making a good backup.

2) next, I'd abandon the use of the auto-increment field rule and use a simple script to insert the new records you need each year. The script would enter one record after another, and change (increment) the desired field values as it goes. We can help you write such a script if you wish.

-- tom

I was wanting to do something like Sharon, until I read your post Tom. I would very much be interested in a script like you described to increment a date field in a dbf I'll be using to keep track of appointments. I have v10.5 though, not v8. Would appreciate the help! Many thanks in advance!

[Stan Mathews]

Re: Auto Increment on Date jumps to 01/20/5032

Populates records in a table (atest) filling the aptdate field with values for 2012.

tbl = table.open("atest",FILE_RW_EXCLUSIVE)
st = {01/01/2012}
while eval_valid(s_quote(st)) .and. st < {01/01/2013}
	tbl.enter_begin()
	tbl.aptdate = st
	tbl.enter_end(.T.)
	st = increment_value(st)
end while
tbl.close()

[avatar1999]

Re: Auto Increment on Date jumps to 01/20/5032

Thanks Stan! Works great! Many thanks!