A question generated by the "pig"

[John Esak]

Hello pig lovers... :-),

Well, I've got a really strange one today. I hope to contact fp support
and/or Ken directly via email or phone today about this, but I was hoping
for a little more confirmation first.  Actually, many, many  of you have now
bought the "Pig in a Poke" code.  I have spoken with lots of you in the FP
Room and on the phone, and I've gotten lots of emails.   It has all been so
positive and fun because everyone is so excited about having  this process
at their fingertips, ready to drop in to their own programs and have it work
for them in their own unique ways. (yes, I know a shameless plug... but,
I've always been influenced by the "Car Guys". :-)

Meanwhile, the real reason for this note... One, just one of the many
Windows sites had a problem. I haven't heard the slightest hiccough over the
*nix stuff yet, but that is why I am asking here and now.  Anyway, on this
particular XP SP2 site, I had to Remote Desktop in and fix it up. After
quite a long time, about 40 minutes, and some accidental printing of the
input table the person was using... I kept forgetting that I was using dcabe
and hitting Y, Y as if I was in rcabe!  Yikes, he must have had hardcopy all
around his place... :-)  Sorry... :-)   Well, I finally found the problem.
He had correctly commented out the 4.8 processing lines (all two of them)
and uncommented the 5.0 processing lines (the same just two of them).  I
hadn't realized this at first, and the table kept blowing up.  It kept
blowing up in that horrible way that just dumps you back to the calling
command with no error at all.  Very frustrating!

I don't remember exactly how and where, but I managed to put in a "debug on"
and some breakpoints in that showed the error before dumping me out to the
real world.  It turns out that the variable "BrowseFile" which I use on the
lookup browse line was mysteriously and for absolutely NO reason becoming
null... cleared, BLANK!!!  God, I was happy to find this, because I knew
right away it was the problem of having three declare'd variables or more on
the browse lookup line that was causing this.    I simply put back the 4.8
version of the lines involved, all two of them, and uncommented the two 5.+
version lines, and the thing started working perfectly, as it should.

The impossible thing to understand is that this system happens to be a
5.0.14 system. At least that is what PFVER says when you go into  dclerk!
How can it work on umpteen 5.0.14 systems perfectly as always, but not on
this one particular system.   So, I guess I'm asking all of you who have the
code to try it out with the two 5.0 lines instead of the 4.8 lines (which is
the way I sent it out by default).  I didn't want this old bug biting anyone
up front, so I felt using the 4.8 method as the default would be smartest.
This one case just happens the person saw the 5.0 lines and correctly
uncommented them and commented out the 4.8 ones as he should have done.

Now, I just thought of one tiny thing... although I can't believe it to be
true, or even to be the cause, but it might... What if his dclerk was 5.014
as it read so clearly and his dcabe was 4.8 or something like that?  Would
this cause the multiple declare'd variables on a browse lookup to fail at
runtime???   Sir, and you know who you are, can you check your dcabe for me
when and if you see this?  Meanwhile, I'll give you a call about it also.
But in the case of curiosity and my sanity, I would love to know if anyone
experiences this same problem  with the two lines of 5.0 code and a new
5.0.14 system. I would be amazed if you do because I had debugged and
pre-tested this code for days before putting it out with a gentleman in
Australia who worked it over thoroughly on his 5.0.14 XP system. Since
finding this strangeness yesterday, I've managed to get confirmation that
several other XP 5.014 systems work fine, too.  But it certainly does NOT
work on the one in question... so what gives? Getting more feedback would be
great. Just let's double check, because how could one person's system do it
and not others. Either the bug has been fixed or it hasn't, right?

By the way, I thoroughly checked the environment of the machine and saw
nothing strange. This gentleman is willing to have FP Tech  login with RDP
and see what I saw, he or I can make those arrangements if that can happen.

So let us know, now that lots of you have the code... try it out as the demo
and just chime in if there is anything odd at all. I don't expect it, but
then, you never know.


John Esak
Visit The FP Room www.tinyurl.com/yuag7 24/7

Take a demo ride on "the pig" at www.valar.com/single you'll be happy you
did. There is a movie describing the whole thing.

.