I am trying to do the following:

  
TABLE FILE TBL1
PRINT
  CUSTNAME
WHERE CUSTNO EQ &CNO
ON TABLE HOLD AS CNAME FORMAT ALPHA
END
-RUN
-READ CNAME &CUST_NAME.A30.
-RUN

It works wonderfully until I run into a name with special characters such as 'N&R CONCRETE'.

How does one work around this?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: <Kathryn Henning>,

Use a quoted string.

quote:

'&CNO.EVAL'

We ran into this a few years back, but we did some data scrubbing.

It's not the &CNO that's causing the issue, it's reading the CUSTNAME.

Is there an error message? I would expect the -READ to work without a hitch.

-- But if you have a line further down with

&CUST_NAME.EVAL

that could cause a problem ("&R is undefined")

I actually use the field as an input to an HTML page so it tries displaying in a text field !IBI.AMP.CUST_NAME; The HTML page just spins and doesn't load .... every.

I've done some more tracing and it does look like all the dialogue manager code is executing just fine, it's when it hits that HTML page.

You could replace any customer names that have a & symbol to &| so 'N&R CONCRETE' becomes 'N&|R CONCRETE' and then it will not error because it can't resolve &R.
Ian

lenny, once you have read the custname into the variable &CUSTNAME, then whenever you reference that variable later, be SURE to use
&CUST_NAME.QUOTEDSTRING
and that should avoid the & problem.
eg:
DEFINE FILE CAR
somename/A30 WITH CAR = &CUST_NAME.QUOTEDSTRING ;
...
or
IF SOMEFIELD EQ &CUST_NAME.QUOTEDSTRING

If you're having issues still, with your html page, then do it the hard way and sledge hammer some quotes around it
-SET &CUST_NAME='''| &CUST_NAME || ''';
(you may have to tinker with that, i can't log on to test it right now)

Hi,
try with this..
May be it will help....
==========================
TABLE FILE TBL1
PRINT
CUSTNAME
WHERE CUSTNO EQ &CNO
ON TABLE HOLD AS CNAME FORMAT ALPHA
END
-RUN
-READ CNAME &DUMMY.A6. &CUST_NAME.A30.
-RUN