Joining Varchar fields?

- ABT

What I'm joining or what's wrong with the join, doesn't really matter to my question. I'm looking at the @000013 code that's giving me a rather unhelpful hint of where the problem is.

I think I found the issue with the joins. Apparently, even though according to the documentation XFOCUS format supports multi-column joins, it can't actually do them. I solved that by creating an artificial key from the combined fields, but I had hoped not to have to resort to kludges like that.

It would have been a major help if the error would be a little more indicative of where the problem was. I think the @000013 code is actually a relative line number counted from the first line in the first JOIN. If I go 12 (=13-1) lines down from there, I end up in the middle of above-mentioned multi-column join.

Unfortunately, with the built-in editor in combination with large amounts of joined TABLE FILEs, that does require some math to end up at the actual line number. Why do I have to do math to understand a message from a computer? It's much better at that than I am. Of course I can calculate an absolute line number based on an offset, but I shouldn't have to! It's silly.

It's a bit like you're at the cashier in a super market and she just blots out the prices of all articles and expects you to add them up yourself.

Computers are for convenience!