Re: simple problem with string handling

Although I'm strongly in favour of using varying length strings, there is
one thing that has bitten me a few times: substringing on a position that
is outside the size of the string;

For example:

if %substr(path :1 :1) = '/';
// absolute path
else;
// relative path
endif;

will bomb if path is an empty varying length field. So it should be
something like:

if %len(path) >= 1 and %substr(path :1 :1) = '/';
// absolute path
else;
// empty or relative path
endif;

This example is easy enough to fix, but it gets messier when you have
something like '%substr(var :pos :len)'.

Joep Beckeringh

Scott Klement

IMHO, varying strings are much more elegant to work with. Even if it
doesn't save any CPU cycles, it just makes your code easier to write.

What's the advantage to sticking with fixed-length strings?