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I'm working on a legacy desktop application. It was written using Xbase++ from Alaska software. I'm just trying to add a new field to an existing db file but I can't find any documentation about how to do it.

I have looked at https://harbour.github.io/doc/ , http://www.ousob.com/ng/clguide/index.php , https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Clipper_Tutorial:_a_Guide_to_Open_Source_Clipper(s) , http://www.alaska-software.com/support/kbase-old.cxp without any luck. All that is documented is about creating a new db file from scratch. Is it even possible to modify a db file structure? 

cFieldExist := .f.

FOR nField := 1 TO (oDbfMaster:ProType)->( FCount() )
    IF (oDbfMaster:ProType)->( FieldName( nField ) ) == 'newFieldName'
        cFieldExist  := .t.
    ENDIF   
NEXT

IF !cFieldExist  
    //Please help me here, I want to add a the new field 'newFieldName'
ENDIF
Robin Perdomo
  • 33
  • 3

1 Answers1

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In the old days, using dBase or Clipper we used to open the table, copy the structure to a new table:

USE dbFile COPY STRUCTURE EXTENDED TO tempFile

In the new table each row is a field from the original table. You append a new field and fill in the field name, data type, field length, no. of decimals, etc.

Then using the temp file, you create a new db file and append the records into it from your old db:

CREATE newFile FROM tempFile USE newFile APPEND FROM dbFile

Lastly, you need to rename the old file and then rename the new file to that name and recreate any indexes.

Dale
  • 147
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