Alpha Software Mobile Development Tools:   Alpha Anywhere    |   Alpha TransForm subscribe to our YouTube Channel  Follow Us on LinkedIn  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Facebook

Announcement

Collapse

The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines

The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
  • Be professional in your conduct
  • Be kind to others
  • Be constructive when giving feedback
  • Be open to new ideas and suggestions
  • Stay on topic


Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
  • Spam.
  • Vulgar language.
  • Quotes from private conversations without permission, including pricing and other sales related discussions.
  • Personal attacks, insults, or subtle put-downs.
  • Harassment, bullying, threatening, mocking, shaming, or deriding anyone.
  • Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
  • Sexually explicit or violent material, links, or language.
  • Pirated, hacked, or copyright-infringing material.
  • Encouraging of others to engage in the above behaviors.


If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
  • Remove the Post or Thread - the content is removed from the forum.
  • Place the User in Moderation - all posts and new threads must be approved by a moderator before they are posted.
  • Temporarily Ban the User - user is banned from forum for a period of time.
  • Permanently Ban the User - user is permanently banned from the forum.


Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.

Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.

Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.

The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.

Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.

Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.



Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting

Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.

When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.

The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.

When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.

A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.

If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.

When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.

Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
See more
See less

Zero Length Strings?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Zero Length Strings?

    Could someone tell me why this expression has a space at the beginning? Prefix is empty. I have tried the alltrim function on the prefix field as well.

    if(len(prefix)=0,"",alltrim(prefix)+" ")+alltrim(first_name)

    Are not double quotes a zero length string?

    Newbe Bill

    #2
    RE: Zero Length Strings?

    Try len(alltrim(prefix))

    Comment


      #3
      RE: Zero Length Strings?

      Tried that, still get the space.

      Comment


        #4
        RE: Zero Length Strings?

        Not really an answer but this might work

        ALLTRIM(if(len(prefix)=0,"",alltrim(prefix)+" ")+alltrim(first_name))

        Comment


          #5
          RE: Zero Length Strings?

          Must be some other issue

          prefix = ""
          first_name = "Tom"
          ? if(len(prefix)=0,"",alltrim(prefix)+" ")+alltrim(first_name)
          = "Tom"

          prefix = " "
          first_name = "Tom"
          ? if(len(prefix)=0,"",alltrim(prefix)+" ")+alltrim(first_name)
          = " Tom"
          There can be only one.

          Comment


            #6
            RE: Zero Length Strings?

            That is the way I got what I wanted but as you said, it doesn't answer the question.

            Comment


              #7
              RE: Zero Length Strings?

              That's what I'm looking for, why does my expression not work?

              Comment


                #8
                RE: Zero Length Strings?

                Bill,

                As Stan mentioned, something else must be going on. Show us the whole script, including especially the pieces that assign an initial value to ' prefix '.

                -- tom

                Comment


                  #9
                  RE: Zero Length Strings?

                  Here goes,

                  Prefix is Mr. Mrs. .... Most of the time it is empty or not used.

                  In a calculated field on a form I have the expression:
                  *******************
                  if(len(prefix)=0,"",alltrim(prefix)+" "))+alltrim(first_name)+" "+(if(len(middle_name)=0,'',alltrim(middle_name)+" "))+alltrim(last_name)+(if(len(suffix)=0,"",' '+alltrim(suffix)))
                  *********************
                  With out the first alltrim function I get a space at the beginning of the field only if prefix is empty, if prefix is not empty like 'Mr.' then there is no space at the beginning of the field.

                  I have checked the prefix field in it appears to be empty, when I move to the field the curser is in the left most position.

                  Thanks for everyones help with this.
                  Bill

                  Comment


                    #10
                    RE: Zero Length Strings?

                    Oops, Try this,

                    Here goes,

                    Prefix is Mr. Mrs. .... Most of the time it is empty or not used.

                    In a calculated field on a form I have the expression:
                    *******************
                    if(len(prefix)=0,"",alltrim(prefix)+" "))+alltrim(first_name)+" "+(if(len(middle_name)=0,'',alltrim(middle_name)+" "))+alltrim(last_name)+(if(len(suffix)=0,"",' '+alltrim(suffix)))
                    *********************
                    I get a space at the beginning of the field only if prefix is empty, if prefix is not empty like 'Mr.' then there is no space at the beginning of the field.

                    I have checked the prefix field in it appears to be empty, when I move to the field the curser is in the left most position.

                    Thanks for everyones help with this.
                    Bill

                    Comment


                      #11
                      RE: Zero Length Strings?

                      Bill,

                      If prefix is a field in a table (which I'm sure it is by the context you've supplied), LEN(prefix) will always equal the width of the field in the table. It does not matter what you've entered into the field, the character field stored is always the width of the field.

                      Hence, with your equation, you get a trimed prefix followed by a space, per your expression.

                      Regards,

                      Ira
                      Regards,

                      Ira J. Perlow
                      Computer Systems Design


                      CSDA A5 Products
                      New - Free CSDA DiagInfo - v1.39, 30 Apr 2013
                      CSDA Barcode Functions

                      CSDA Code Utility
                      CSDA Screen Capture


                      Comment


                        #12
                        RE: Zero Length Strings?

                        That's it! Thanks Ira

                        Thanks to everyone who replied. I hope to get up to speed with Alpha and xbasic before too long and be able to give help in return.

                        Bill

                        Comment


                          #13
                          RE: Zero Length Strings?

                          Bill, it's helpful to remember that the DBF format uses fixed width fields. Each record is the same size (in bytes) even if some of it's fields are empty. This trick is achieved by storing blank spaces in each empty field, and by padding 'short' field values with extra spaces.

                          -- tom

                          Comment


                            #14
                            RE: Zero Length Strings?

                            So, in your case, the Prefix field wasn't truly empty, it was full of blank space characters. While it appeared empty it wasn't, if you see what I mean. -- tom

                            Comment


                              #15
                              RE: Zero Length Strings?

                              Thanks Tom, I kind of figured that out with Ira's reply.

                              This is the first time I have seen this type of arrangement. Usually I see nulls or empty (zero length)strings (access and sql). Do you know what the reasoning is for padding every charater field?

                              Bill

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X