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Interrogate the date on a .DBF

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    Interrogate the date on a .DBF

    Is there any way in Alpha 4 for us to interrogate the
    date that a file was built ? NOT the system date.
    In our application occasionally we need to rebuild a
    telephone number database. It would be nice for users
    if they could determine the last time that this was done.
    I know that the DIR command in DOS print this out on
    a screen. But we are writing this application for people
    who are not computer literate and in any case they
    are running an ALpha App. So is there a way that I could
    build a script that could interrogate the date that the
    PHONE.DBF file was last built and display it on an
    Alpha screen ?
    Thanks, Barry Jackson, FEMA, Denton,TX

    #2
    RE: Interrogate the date on a .DBF

    Barry,

    I don�t know of any commands within Alpha that will give you what you are looking for, but, I have been able to get the information you are after, with the aid of a batch file. The attached zip file contains the batch file, a test database and 2 scripts.

    Place the batch file in your root directory.
    Create a folder called DATETEST and copy test.dbf & test.idn into DATETEST
    Copy the 2 scripts to the location of your script path.

    I have used the A4.bat in the example, the batch file assumes that A4.bat resides in C:Alpha4v6 if not you will have to edit the batch file to suit.


    Once in Alpha run the script CHK_DATE


    I hope this will help you with some ideas, if I can help further, please contact me either privately or through this board.

    Comment


      #3
      RE: Interrogate the date on a .DBF

      Barry,
      I took the liberty of taking Keith's idea and expanding it. After you unzip the attached GetDate.zip file, open any database. Then run the GetDate script. It will capture the date and time of the currently open database and write that information to the FileDate.dbf database. It works like this. Capture the current drive, path and database name. Pass the database name to the DOS getdate.bat file and run it. Pipe the data to the getdate.txt file and return to A4. Import getdate.txt into the File254.dbf database. View the File254 record and extract the date and time information and store it in variables. Finally, open the GetDate.dbf database and write a record. To test it out, open the PHONE database and run the getdate script. Then open the CARDFILE database and run the getdate script. Then browse the GETDATE database and you will see 2 entries.
      Keith, you gave me the idea. Thanks.
      Gary

      Comment


        #4
        RE: Interrogate the date on a .DBF

        Many thanks to Keith and Gary for their responses to my question. I have implemented their solution. To Gary I found that I had to alter the statement
        {SET %GETDATE1, SUBSTR(FIELD1,125,50)}
        to {SET %GETDATE1, SUBSTR(FIELD1,100,75)}
        because it was not evaluating the following
        expression to a positive number
        AT("-",%GETDATE1)
        i.e. the "-" sign was not in the area being examined.
        But this is now a useful script to have.

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