Fun VFP quiz

[Mike Lewis]

If you want to relax for five minutes, forum member Geoff Franklin (aka AlvechurchData) has posted an amusing VFP quiz, at

http://www.alvechurchdata.co.uk/foxtriviaq.htm

Even if you know all the answers, you'll probably still learn something from it. I did (Q8 in my case; also second bonus in Q2).

Have fun.

Mike


__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My sites:
Visual FoxPro (www.ml-consult.demon.co.uk)
Crystal Reports (www.ml-crystal.com)

 

[Stella740pl]

I also learned Q8, and a couple more where I wasn't sure I was able to guess correctly (say, Q4).

But the second bonus has more than 1 answer.
At least in VFP6 (please check in later versions).

Holding down Shift causes Window|Hide change to Window|Hide All, and Window|Show All is also added to the menu.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Stella,

Holding down Shift causes Window|Hide change to Window|Hide All, and Window|Show All is also added to the menu.

You're right. Looks like that applies to all versions.

Mike


__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My sites:
Visual FoxPro (www.ml-consult.demon.co.uk)
Crystal Reports (www.ml-crystal.com)

 

[alvechurchdata]

I'm glad I've provided a little innocent entertainment. We use the quiz as an icebreaker on our Advanced VFP courses. It gives folk an excuse to talk about Fox and bring out some of their favourite oddities. Which is what's happening here<g>.

Holding down Shift causes Window|Hide change to Window|Hide All, and Window|Show All is also added to the menu.

I didn't know that trick.

Geoff Franklin

http://www.alvechurchdata.co.uk

 

[TamarGranor]

FWIW, your comment on 7 about Unique indexes being removed in VFP 9 is wrong. They're still there (backward compatibility and all that).

I also think that question is a little misleading, since you use the UNIQUE keyword to specify a candidate index in CREATE TABLE.

Tamar

 

[craigber]

hehe... I got them all right!

Craig Berntson
MCSD, Visual FoxPro MVP,

http://www.craigberntson.com

Author, CrysDev: A Developer's Guide to Integrating Crystal Reports&quot;

 

[Mike Lewis]

Tamar,

You're right that UNIQUE is still in the language -- it's certainly in the Help and in Intellisense.

I think what Geoff meant was that it's not available in the table designer. Then again, if you open a table that already has a unique index, you will see "unique" in the index type combo (I suppose that's obvious).

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My sites:
Visual FoxPro (www.ml-consult.demon.co.uk)
Crystal Reports (www.ml-crystal.com)

 

[alvechurchdata]

I think what Geoff meant was that it's not available in the table designer

Sloppy use of the language I agree.

But on the bright side I discovered today that, despite being deprecated in Help, INSERT is still in the language. I used it (may I be forgiven) to put a record back in the "right" place.

Geoff Franklin

http://www.alvechurchdata.co.uk

 

[TamarGranor]

Craig - Me, too.

Tamar

 

[alvechurchdata]

Me, too.

I would expect no less.

Geoff Franklin

http://www.alvechurchdata.co.uk

 

[craigsboyd]

Well, I missed them all. Top that!

SweetPotato Software Website
My Blog

 

[Mike Lewis]

INSERT is still in the language. I used it (may I be forgiven) to put a record back in the "right" place.

You know, Goeff, in the 26 years that I have worked with dBASE, Clipper, Foxbase and FoxPro, I think that is the first time I have ever known anyone to admit to using that command.

What next? SORT? JOIN?

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My sites:
Visual FoxPro (www.ml-consult.demon.co.uk)
Crystal Reports (www.ml-crystal.com)

 

[Olaf Doschke]

Hi all,

nice quiz, I missed 2 (and the bonus questions) and 4.
Applause for Craig Bertnson and Tamar, and of course Geoff.

The change in the menu with [SHIFT] is nice. A foxpro hotkey that's more helpful to me is [SHIFT]+[CTRL]+[ALT]. Does everybody know, what it does?

Bye, Olaf.

 

[alvechurchdata]

that is the first time I have ever known anyone to admit to using that command.

First time I've ever used it in anger but it was the only solution possible on a Friday afternoon.

The app is a parts list. It relies on the main body parts being entered into the dbf before the other components so that they come out first on reports and browses. There's nothing in the data structure to identify the body parts as being body parts and the whole app relies on physical record order.

You know it's wrong, I know it's wrong, but the app's been running for years like this and I can't persuade the client to pay me pots of money to rewrite the whole thing.

Geoff Franklin

http://www.alvechurchdata.co.uk

 

[alvechurchdata]

Does everybody know, what it does?

I do now<g>. You're right - it is more useful.

Geoff Franklin

http://www.alvechurchdata.co.uk

 

[Stella740pl]

A foxpro hotkey that's more helpful to me is [SHIFT]+[CTRL]+[ALT]. Does everybody know, what it does?

Found out some couple of years ago, here, on Tek-Tips, as far as I can remeber - and use it often ever since.

 

[TamarGranor]

I actually used the Xbase INSERT command in an app many years ago. I no longer remember the exact circumstances (except that it was a sub-contract job from Whil Hentzen), but I was working with an extremely small table that needed records to be in a particular order and it was the best solution.

Tamar

 

[Ivanq]

Insert

I use Insert quite a bit as I have apps that read txt files into a table where each line of text is a single record. There is no way to create an index key for something like this ( that I know of) and, at times, I need to insert a record at the correct physical place in the table. Insert does the job and very quickly too. Even in tables with 250,000 or more records. May not be 'elegant' but it works.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Well, it just goes to show. There's me saying I had never heard of anyone using that command, and before you know it, three people have popped up who do just that.

Mike


__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My sites:
Visual FoxPro (www.ml-consult.demon.co.uk)
Crystal Reports (www.ml-crystal.com)

 

[alvechurchdata]

Well, it just goes to show.

Clarke's Law:

[blue]When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.[/blue]

Geoff Franklin

http://www.alvechurchdata.co.uk