[net.micro.pc] dBASE II v. 2.4 'feature'

jp@lanl-a.UUCP (08/27/84)

I believe that I have discovered a feature of dBASE II v. 2.4.
The report command has a new option 'WHILE' <exp>' that terminates the
report as soon as the while condition is not satisfied.  The feature is
that 'WHILE' does not work in combination with 'FOR <exp>'.  I thought
that I would be clever and fix up a way to terminate the report prematurely
by using the patch (I forgot where it comes from) that stores the most recent
keyboard character in a location (337 decimal) that does not get zeroed
by dBASE II.   Then I could set up the report something like:

REPORT FORM TEST FOR LASTNAME='D' WHILE PEEK(337)<>3 TO PRINT

Then, if I was unhappy with the report  I could quit with a CTL-C instead
of waiting for the whole thing to finish or hitting the reset button (not a
good practice if you have recently editted a file.)

Both the 'FOR' and the 'WHILE' options work OK by themselves, but not together
in either order.  
Maybe I ask too much of dBASE II.  Does anyone have a good idea about how 
to interrupt a report output without hitting reset???

Jim Potter  jp@LANL