Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!amdcad!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!mcvax!ukc!its63b!dougie
From: dougie@its63b.ed.ac.uk (Dougie Nisbet)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: British date in dBase III
Message-ID: <1316@its63b.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 12 May 88 17:12:13 GMT
References: <19@csnz.nz>
Reply-To: dougie@its63b.ed.ac.uk (Dougie Nisbet)
Organization: Medical Statistics Unit, University of Edinburgh
Lines: 40

In article <19@csnz.nz> paul@csnz.UUCP (Paul Gillingwater) writes:
>In article <1251@its63b.ed.ac.uk> dougie@its63b.ed.ac.uk (Dougie Nisbet) writes:
>>There is a command SET DATE BRITISH which allows use to use british
>>type dates, once we have started dBASE, but it does not seem to be possible
>>to insert the command DATE = BRITISH into the CONFIG.DB file.
>
>Try this in your CONFIG.DB:
>COMMAND=SET DATE BRITISH
>

No, this doesn't work. (At least, not with my version - 1.1)
The number of 'SET' commands which you can put in your CONFIG.DB seems
to be a subset of the total number of SET commands, and the 'SET'
part is dropped when it is placed in the file.

>I find it better to create an INIT.CMD file with such commands in it,
>e.g. SET DATE BRITISH.  Then put COMMAND=DO INIT into CONFIG.DB

Many people suggested this solution to me. I think that the CONFIG.DB
file should be able to set up an environment which is *always* 
required. i.e. I will always want dates in british format, this is not
application dependant. When I want to use a slightly different working
environment, I can use the command file name as an argument to the
dbase command.

For me to have to call a secondary startup program to set up a default
environment seems unelegant. I could have 5 dbase applications, each
called from five different DOS batch files, and each one would need the
date set.

Yes, it *is* a piddling little detail, so why isn't it possible?


>-- 
>Paul Gillingwater, Senior Consultant   Call my private BBS - Magic Tower,
>Computer Sciences of New Zealand Ltd   NZ +64 4 753561 V21/V23 8N1 24hrs
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Dougie Nisbet