Re: Defining two fields as one.

"Walden H. Leverich" wrote:

Are lot1 and lot2 in the db files? If so, are they sequential in the
files? What would happen if you defined lotall as a 10 char field *based
on the lot1 field. Working off the top of my head here, not sure it
would work, but I'm thinking that the lotall field will then start at
the same memory position as lot1 and cover both fields (provided they're
sequential in the db).

No, wouldn't work.  Fields being sequential in the db doesn't guarantee
they are sequential in the program, since the fields would be defined as
standalone fields.  The only one way to guarantee that is to define the
fields as sequential subfields in a data structure.  The easy way to do
that is to define an externally-described data structure.

Unfortunately, without a ds, they do sometimes happen to be sequential,
which leads to hard-to-debug and sometimes hard-to-fix problems when a
recompile causes them not to be sequential.  Lots of things could cause
this to change - a compiler change, system change, a completely
unrelated new field or new line of code in the program, etc.