Deleting Fields in 4D

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3 total messages Started by Charles Keller Wed, 19 Aug 1992 20:23

#210

Author: Charles Keller
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 20:23

5 lines
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Once in the structure design mode, how do you eliminate a field?

Charles Keller
[ckeller@mbcr.bcm.tmc.edu]

Re: Deleting Fields in 4D

#214

Author: l boyd
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 22:10

13 lines
788 bytes

ckeller@mbcr.bcm.tmc.edu (Charles Keller) writes:

>Once in the structure design mode, how do you eliminate a field?

>Charles Keller
>[ckeller@mbcr.bcm.tmc.edu]

We should run an article every so often with the answer to this question:

No can do.  According to acius, "It's a feature, not a bug."  (-:

Lauren

Re: Deleting Fields in 4D

#213

Author: Charles Albrecht
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 22:15

35 lines
2011 bytes

In article <14183@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu> ckeller@mbcr.bcm.tmc.edu (Charles Keller) writes:
>
>Once in the structure design mode, how do you eliminate a field?
>
>Charles Keller
>[ckeller@mbcr.bcm.tmc.edu]
>

Aha, you've discovered one of the interesting things about 4D.  You can't.
Someone was explaining this recently and there is supposedly a reason for it.
In FileMaker, for instance, if you try to delete a field that's used in a 
calculation field, it won't let you do it.  4D's procedures can get a whole lot
more complicated, and since the procedures use pointers (of sorts) to the
structure, you could get into big trouble when a long lost procedure needs
to get the field you just deleted.  

Apparently there's a flag you can turn off (or on) with ResEdit that will 
allow you to delete fields, but I haven't tried to find it.  I just call
the empty field "Reserved" and set it to Alpha-2 or boolean.

I'm not sure agree with Aci's reasoning on the matter, but I guess verison
1 or beta of 4D allowed field deletion and it caused so many problems they
took it out.

Charles

---
Charles Albrecht                "Nonsense, they only say you can't survive
charlesa@ncar.ucar.edu           The Fire Swamp because no one ever has."
303/497-1828                        - Westley, The Dread Pirate Roberts

NCAR - Scientific Computing Division * P.O. Box 3000 * Boulder, Colorado  80307

The opinions you are about to have read are fictitious...
          ...any similarity to opinions living or dead is purely coincidental.

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