How to store more than 400 characters in a field? 3

[Mandy_crw]

Hi everyone… in one of my fields in my table, i found out that its only 254 characters its allowed… but what i need in my project is more than 400… may i ask suggestion from you what to do? Thanks…

 

[Chris Miller]

Either use two char fields or Memo.

Chriss

 

[Mandy_crw]

Ok Chriss... I'll just add another field... Thanks...

 

[Mike Lewis]

Mandy, this is exactly what memo fields were invented for. A memo field can contain up to 16 million characters. And the great thing about it is that it is variable length: there is no space wasted with padding, as there is with ordinary character fields.

Mike


__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[GriffMG]

But you do get bloat with memo fields, because they don't reuse space, IIRC if you save a memo twice - even with the same contents - it allocates new blocks
to the .fpt file.

Character fields (of 240 chars or less) can be indexed, a memo field cannot be (directly).

Regards

Griff
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[Chris Miller]

I didn't just straight go for recommending memo, because always needing something like 400-500 chars you're actually good with 2 chars instead of 1 memo. It's CSV friendly, too.
If more than 400 is meant as unbound and often also means more than 508, then surely memo is simpler. Memo also is simpler from the point of view of binding it to an editbox and not need handling of splitting a value ranging from 254 to 508 length into two fields.

So yes, there are pros and cons, I mentioned both.

Chriss

 

[Mike Lewis]

Griff and Chris: All good points. I suggest that Mandy try both solutions (a memo field or two character fields) to decide which one works best in her case.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[Mandy_crw]

Yes Mike... I'll try both and see which is best....Thanks you everyone....