I have a field called PCDOCNUM/A6.
It contains values like '00369' and
'85323' as well as 'ALL' or 'WILSON'.

I cannot find a sample, nor remember how I would accept only those values that are
numeric across the entire string.

How could this be done without coding a very large WHERE statement?

Thanks!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kerry,

Tom,

I don't know what release of 7.6 you are running but there is a new function called PATTERN in 7.6.5 (pg. 76 of the SofNF for 765) which might be helpful.

SOOOOOOO cool! thanks Ginny

No need to wait for 765

CHKFMT function has been there for ever (almost)

But, if you have a leading or trailing space in your alpha field that is otherwise totally numeric, CHKFMT returns a 1 - stating it is not numeric - which is in this case not correct.
You could solve that by using a combination of EDIT and CHKFMT. If the result of the EDIT is 0 and the result of CHKFMT is also 0 then it is definitely not a numeric contents.
The following example show that:

FILEDEF MFD DISK mfd1.mas
-RUN
-WRITE MFD FILENAME=MFD1, SUFFIX=FIX, $
-WRITE MFD SEGNAME=MFD1, $
-WRITE MFD FIELDNAME=COL1 , FORMAT=A6   , ACTUAL=A6, $

FILEDEF MFD1 DISK mfd1.ftm
-RUN
-WRITE MFD1 123456
-WRITE MFD1 all
-WRITE MFD1   9900
-WRITE MFD1 wilson
-WRITE MFD1 000000
-WRITE MFD1   44
-WRITE MFD1 this

TABLE FILE mfd1
PRINT COL1
      COMPUTE COL2/I6 = EDIT(COL1);
      COMPUTE COL3/I6 = CHKFMT(6, COL1, '999999', COL3)
END

Hope this helps ...

Thanks all for your replies.

Ginny,

I tried the PATTERN function and it worked like a jewel!

Thanks,
Tom

Tom will you edit your Subject line and put [SOLVED]?

Thanks

Cross reference to : http://forums.informationbuild...1057331/m/7627090276

I added that URL just to make it easy for the next time anyone needs this.