You can't do that

[Jeff Harrison]

Here are some things that I never found a good way to
do using filepro.  Please prove me wrong if you can.  

Say that I have "remove unwanted blank lines" checked
off on my output format, but I want to conditionally
force a blank line based on some logic in my code.  I
have a couple of ways that I have used to do this, but
none of them are really "good" i.e. easy to use,
generic, portable, and intrinsic to filepro.

Here is what I have used for this in the past:

A.  Use a dummy field that you populate with a
character that does not print on the given printer. 
(Of course you can't use the space character for this
because filepro assumes this would be an unwanted
blank line.) - this solution is printer dependent.

B.  Use a dummy field that is conditionally populated
with a period.  - (ugly - You can place the field
outside the print area, but this makes it printer
dependent again.

Another item that I found impossible in filepro was
creating a good edit that would center text.  I once
wrote an edit that would center some text, but it only
worked if you did not have any spaces in the middle of
the string to be centered.  I know this can be done in
processing, but I had hoped for a edit solution for
this one.

Another item is referencing export fields with an
array.  This was a big deal for me at one time - that
is why I wrote JHExport - so it is not really a big
deal for me anymore.

Here are some other "would be nices":

Functions and arguments would be nice.  I would like
to pass arguments to a particular call (or chain) and
have it return a value.

Code completion.  This is so nice in modern languages.
 The IDE knows what the command arguments should be
and automatically fills them in when it can.

Rules for data integrity.  It would be nice to be able
to set up certain rules in define processing that
would prevent certain situations from being allowed. 
For example one could set up a rule to ensure that
there would be no child data without a header record. 
Another rule could be that a certain field must be
filled in and no duplicates allowed, etc.

Recursion would be nice, but I never found myself
lacking this really.  However, I would like to be able
to have a call within a call.

Filepro is so wired into me that I never found myself
in need of an ELSE statement, but some people find
this to be a problem.

That is all that comes to mind at the moment.  Some of
this may be fodder for the wish list, I know.

Jeff Harrison
jeffaharrison at yahoo.com

Author of JHExport and JHImport.  The easiest and
fastest ways to generate code for filePro exports and
imports.


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