Any response to my DECLARE question

[Joe Chasan]

On Thu, Apr 22, 2004 at 08:19:15AM -0400, John Esak wrote:
> 
> Did anyone have a response to my question about DECLARE EXTERN not giving an
> error at runtime if the variable is referenced and there is no DECLARE'd
> GLOBAL partner to be found?  Shouldn't filePro complain if a variable has
> not been established correctly before it is used?
> 
> To restate:
> 
> Just as you can't do:
>        a=xx
> 
> if xx has not been brought into existence somewhere else, why should you be
> able to do:
> 
>    then: declare long_variable
>    then: a=long_variable
> 
> if there isn't a DECLARE global long_variable in the "calling" table?

i checked within debugger, and the undeclared declared variable (can i
say that?) has length 0, type "*" - certainly seems painless, but I'd
rather see an error in case one table depended on another and at runtime
was not called with appropriate -y or -z flag or a brain fart caused a
typo that would cause all sorts of problems later if some expected value
was not there.
 
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-Joe Chasan-                      Magnatech Business Systems, Inc.
joe at magnatechonline.com           Hicksville, NY - USA
http://www.MagnatechOnline.com    Tel.(516) 931-4444/Fax.(516) 931-1264