[AccessD] dBASE

Jim Lawrence accessd at shaw.ca
Tue Jun 17 13:27:36 CDT 2014


Hi David:

If my memory serves me well, in the older versions of DBase, adding a quotation mark in the entry data could corrupt the file as a three character deliminator, used as a separator between data fields, could confuse the program. The new data clerk could inadvertently have entered invalid data combination...so the last data entries in the table may be where to look for corruption. If they have an old version of the data (a backup) the file may work just fine in that case.  

Jim

----- Original Message -----
From: "David McAfee" <davidmcafee at gmail.com>
To: "Access Developers discussion and problem solving" <accessd at databaseadvisors.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2014 11:13:29 AM
Subject: Re: [AccessD] dBASE

That's how the old rBase database operated, so I was hoping to see
something similar. I guess the original developer died, and it's been in
operation for numerous years. Last week they tried to run a weekly report
and got the syntax error.

I was even thinking some invalid character might have been entered.
I think a temp employee was the last person to enter data.

It is DOS based, and started from a bat file.

When I open the bat file in Note Pad, this is what I see:
REM pscserv
cd\pscserv
c:\db42\dbase

so I copied all of the contents of the two directories onto a thumbdrive
and brought them to my office. I was able to install DosBox on my 64 bit W8
box and mount the thumbdrive. It appears that I can reproduce the error on
my laptop.

I'm going to play with the re-index option on the menu and see what that
does (on my laptop copy).



On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 10:42 AM, Jim Lawrence <accessd at shaw.ca> wrote:

> Hi David:
>
> I understand that an older version of Access (2003) may be able to read
> the file. I would suspect data corruption would be at fault and could be
> resolved. The old DBase file formats were basically text files with forward
> and backward links so if necessary a good editor could allow you to fix the
> file directly.
>
> Jim
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "David McAfee" <davidmcafee at gmail.com>
> To: "Access Developers discussion and problem solving" <
> accessd at databaseadvisors.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2014 10:04:54 AM
> Subject: [AccessD] dBASE
>
> Are there any dBASE specialists out there? We have an old dBASE 5.0 db
> that's getting syntax errors while trying to run a report.
>
> I don't even know where to begin. I haven't touched rBase in over 15 years.
>
> I would love to pic your brain.
>
> Thanks,
> David
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