Creation password prompt at runtime

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Mon, Aug 02, 2004 at 06:30:16PM -0400, John Esak wrote:
> This is an ongoing problem. Ken is aware of it. I assume it will be
> addressed somehow in an upcoming release. In the meantime, just do a "dummy"
> lookup to that file with the actual filename in the lookup line, somewhere
> on the table. Even at the  end "after" the END statement so it never really
> gets done. The only reason it is there is so you can answer the password
> question at "creatine time" instead of at "runtime". I agree that this is a
> pain, but there is no way I can think of for filePro to parse out that the
> variable holds a particular filename... what if it is changed over and over
> in the processing. Obviously, if it is used just once in the processing,
> that is fine, and could probably be done easily... but what if it is used 5
> times with different names and what if some of them are expressions...
> dependent on a runtime situation... ?  It all gets pretty sticky. So the
> easy solution until Ken figures out the hard stuff is to just put a dummy
> lookup with the real name of the file somewhere at the end of the table...
> and all will be well.

IHMO, your instinctive reaction is correct, John: there's not way to
define how it should be handled except to prompt when the look is down.

I have a counterpoint question (though it may be answered inherently in
the original posting, which I don't think I've seeen here yet):

Why should it be any other way?

You only need to prompt people whose code path *goes to the file you
have a runtime password on*, and obviously, you want that file
protected, or you wouldn't have put a password there in the first
place.

ISTM that the only programmer caveat is, if you're doing this sort of
tihng in a table: be *real* careful where the edges of your
transactions are.

Which way does it fail a bad password?  Does it error out to a menu, or
just fail the lookup?

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
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