Re: subfile issue

Simon Coulter schreef:

Because if the user enters something but then
decides to blank the field or just rekeys the original value, the record
will be read by READC, even if nothing actually changed.

So you consider 'blanking' the field (i.e., replacing the existing data with blanks) as not changing the record? Interesting.

OK, my wording was not perfectly clear there. What I meant was a user entering a value in a hitherto blank field (e.g. a selection or option field, not uncommon in subfile handling) and then blanking it again (because maybe it was the wrong line).

Mostly I am not
interested whether a user touched a record after I last displayed it,
but whether the contents of the record have changed since I filled it.

You need to do that with your proposed READ loop too. At least READC will only give you records the user 'did something' with instead of all records--most of which you likely don't care about.

Exactly. Whether one uses READC or a FOR-loop, the burden of determining whether a record is actually changed is always on the application. So all READC buys you is a bit of performance, because it skips some unnecessary reads. Performance at the cost of clarity might have had its use (in application programming) twenty years ago, but I don't think that performance of interactive programs is really an issue with todays hardware.

You probably think every programmer should know every paragraph in the manual by heart; I know most programmers don't.

Joep Beckeringh