FoxPro Data Convertor

[foxprox558]

Hi, As per the program I was previously working on, I have managed to get copies of the databases for the DOS program, and I'm making a converter to save time and effort, But the problem is: How do I tell the program to go to the next record without saying 'goto recno()+1', I tried that and got "Error, Record is out of range

 

[DSummZZZ]

F1 can be your friend.
There are many way to move the record pointer:
SCAN...ENDSCAN
DO WHILE !EOF()...ENDDO
SKIP
LOCATE FOR
SEEK
.
.
.


-Dave Summers-

Even more Fox stuff at:

http://www.davesummers.net/foxprolinks.htm

 

[foxprox558]

Thanks! But do you know of a way that I can break this type of string into 2 variables?
in the old databases, it puts the firstname and lastname in the same field, my program separates them
Old database name format:[Field::Name] <lastname>, <firstname>
MY name database format:[Field::Last] <Last>
MY name database format:[Field::First] <First>
is there a way I can break the old database's names apart so I can properly put them into my database?

 

[Dan Freeman]

Foxpro is pretty uniquely great at data conversions because it has been around for so long and still has everything ever added to it.

In your case, you need to spend a bit of time in the help file. I think you'll find Left(), Right(), Substr(), At(), Rat(), Occurs() and possibly even GetWordNum() useful.

How to make them useful? Well, gosh, there are as many ways as there are people.

 

[foxprox558]

Haha, Well a good evening to you and thanks!

 

[Olaf Doschke]

And ALINES() and STREXTRACT(). GETWORDNUM should be easiest to cope with, if you use the "," as the separator instead of the default (which would be any white space characters).

Bye, Olaf.

 

[Dan Freeman]

And also see all of the See Also links in all of the above help topics.

 

[TamarGranor]

This article on my website may be helpful to you:

http://www.tomorrowssolutionsllc.com/Articles/Breaking Up is Not Hard to Do.pdf

Tamar

 

[Olaf Doschke]

Here in detail, what I would do about the <lastname>, <firstname> containing field

USE Names.dbf
BROWSE FOR OCCURS(',',NVL(Name,''))<>1

No records show up? Fine! If records show, they either have no comma, or more than one or NULL as Name. Fix them. If there are lots of only last names, you may leave them as is, that won't matter, but if there are some names only first name, add a comma in front.

SELECT PADR(LTRIM(GETWORDNUM(Name,1,',')),LEN(Name)) As Last, PADR(LTRIM(GETWORDNUM(Name,2,',')),LEN(Name)) As First From Names INTO CURSOR curSeparated

This would make the conversion on the fly and also work for the corner cases, the previous field is fully used for either first or last name, the new fields in average only would need half the length, but it doesn't hurt to let each field - first and last - have the length of the former name field. You can shorten the fields later.

To put the result into a table either select...INTO TABLE or have a table with the two fields prepared empty and then do

INSERT INTO TABLE SeparatedNames (Last, First) ;
SELECT PADR(LTRIM(GETWORDNUM(Name,1,',')),LEN(Name)) As Last, PADR(LTRIM(GETWORDNUM(Name,2,',')),LEN(Name)) As First From Names

To create a 2.6 table instead keep it at INTO CURSOR, and then SELECT curSeparated bfore you do COPY TO NewTable.DBF TYPE Fox2x.

Bye, Olaf.