Changed behavior of show "@"

[Barry Wiseman]

Walter Vaughan wrote:
> Barry Wiseman wrote:
>> Did that doc precede or follow the "bugfix"?  On page 13-132, my 
>> FILEPRO PLUS 3.0 manual (undated) says, under "Restrictions,"
>>
>>     Do not use the row/column parameter with the at-sign (@). If
>>     both are included in the SHOW command, the cursor-position
>>     information is ignored.
> 
> Not that it has bit me, but with a boolean choice here, the proper thing 
> to do would be to honor behavior rather than appearance. Given a choice 
> between behaving properly (in this case stopping processing and 
> displaying a message until the operator presses return) and putting that 
> message in the right spot, the behavior that required human interaction 
> should always trump over appearance.
> 
> But I guess someone would have to fund the ability to use the old style 
> "normal" behavior via a "FP_SHOW@=old" environmental variable, or what 
> makes more sense is to honor both inputs to the function. With a product 
> that is currently "best in breed" for character based applications, I 
> find it hard to believe that it's still a deal breaker to both pause for 
> operator input and display a string in an arbitrary point on the screen 
> via the show@ method.
> 
> I'm with you... the "new" behavior is broken and is unexpected. Of 
> course the current docs tell you "not to do this"... <insert circular 
> argument here>

I really can't complain much, as in 25 years of filePro programming I can only recall 
two instances ever of being bitten by changed behavior.  One involved some change 
long ago in numeric compares with blank versus zero.  I don't recall the exact issue, 
but the legacy of that is this type of construction throughout my code:

	If: Numeric_Field+"0" eq "0"

The other was very trivial.  I had to change an array name that appeared commonly in 
my code when the word "MEMO" became a reserved word.


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  Barry Wiseman                              barry at gensoftdes.com
  Genesis Software Designs, Inc.            Voice: (212) 889-9191
  18 E. 41 Street, New York, NY 10017         Fax: (212) 889-1589
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