dummy fields

[Fairlight]

Only Kenneth Brody would say something like:
> On 10/19/2010 10:09 AM, Fairlight wrote:
> > Are dummy fields shared between processing tables that are CALL/CHAINed?  I
> > suspect yes to CHAIN but no to CALL.  I need to know what the real deal is.
> >
> > Also, what about during calls to tables in other files?
> 
> Dummy fields that are declared in the automatic processing table will be 
> shared among all processing tables(*).  Those that are not, are not shared 
> at all.
> 
> (*) The exception, of course, being those called via "CALL NOAUTO".

Questions...

1) I'm not familiar with CALL NOAUTO; please explain what this does?  The
4.8 docs that Bob Stockler gave me in man page format don't contain any
reference to "noauto" (case insensitive grep yielded nothing).  I'm
assuming it's a 5.0 or 5.6-ism.

2) Possibly more importantly...  Let's say you're in file "file1" and have
a dummy variable "tn" defined in automatic processing.  Now, let's say that
somewhere in the input processing table, there's a CALL "file2/specialtable".
Is "tn" shared between file1's automatic and file2's specialtable?  Or is
the scope limited to only processing tables within file1?

3) Are dummy variables matching reserved operators valid?  Examples:  co,
eq, gt, et, le, lt.  My recollection is that thoy -are- valid, but I wanted
to doublecheck.  And if they are valid, how does fP's parser go about
detecting whether "gt" is greater than, or a field for a grand total, for
instance?  What's the methodology, placement within a statement that is
either within an argument list (as with MID(), for example), or if one of
those reserved combinations essentially -doesn't- fall between two
"objects", then it's considered a dummy field, but if it's not part of an
argument list and it does fall between two "objects/clauses", then it's
considered an operator?  I'm imagining that detecting the non-argument-list
semantics is essentially done by breaking up the statement into its
component clauses and then seeing if something falls in position 1, 2, or
3...if it's in position 2, it's an operator, if not, it's a dummy field.
Is this even remotely a sane way to tell which something is...assuming that
dummies that match reserved operators are even valid?

Thanks in advance...

mark->
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