FIX: Problem Converting FP2.6 Screens With Large Labels & @SAYs

• Microsoft Visual FoxPro for Windows, version 6.0

SYMPTOMS

The following error message is received when converting a FoxPro 2.6 for Windows screen to a Visual FoxPro 6.0 form.:

WARNING - Expression too long at Record #<record number>.
The expression was not converted. See the log file for details.

CAUSE

This is known to happen if the FoxPro 2.6 screen has a large label on it.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a bug in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article.

This bug was corrected in Visual Studio 6.0 Service Pack 3.

For more information about Visual Studio service packs, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q194022 INFO: Visual Studio 6.0 Service Packs, What, Where, Why

Q194295 HOWTO: Tell That Visual Studio 6.0 Service Packs Are Installed

MORE INFORMATION

In FoxPro 2.6, a label is created with the Screen Designer tool button with the capital A on it. The screen generator generates this into an @...SAY in the .spr file it creates. An @...SAY or output field can also be created with the FoxPro 2.6 Screen Designer tool button with the ab| symbol on it and choosing the Output Field(Say) option button in the Field dialog box. This later type of @...SAY will convert into a text box control in Visual FoxPro rather than a label control. Text box controls do not have caption properties.

If the FoxPro 2.6 label is over approximately 221 characters (including two carriage returns), the error message listed above will be produced and the caption property of the label control will just be Label1, or what ever label number it is, when the screen is converted. The reason that two carriage return characters are included is because it is very hard to visually fit more than about 108 characters on a label line without pressing the ENTER key to create a new line for the label.

In FoxPro 2.6, the maximum number of characters that could be entered for a label varied depending on how many carriage returns there were. Each time the ENTER key was pressed, a carriage return character (CHR(13)) was entered into the label text. If there are two carriage returns, the maximum number of other characters that could be entered was 252. If there are five carriage returns, the maximum number of characters that could be entered was 249. Therefore, in FoxPro 2.6, the maximum length of a label was 254 characters with a carriage return counting as a character. A line feed character was not added with the carriage return when the ENTER key was pressed.

Some FoxPro 2.6 developers might have long labels on their screens as text instructions or descriptions for their applications.

The Convert.app or the converter for Visual FoxPro has been updated in Visual Studio 6.0 Service Pack 3 to allow for label captions up to 254 characters, including the carriage returns. What happens in the new Convert.app is that the label caption from the FoxPro 2.6 form is truncated at 254 characters. The character count includes a character for each carriage return. Then the carriage return characters are removed.

Therefore, a FoxPro 2.6 label caption of 254 characters that includes five carriage returns will turn into a label caption of 249 characters after being converted. In Visual FoxPro, the maximum length of a label caption is 254 characters. Some FoxPro 2.6 labels that do not have many carriage returns may have the last few characters truncated. For instance, a label of 254 characters that includes just two carriage returns has the last two characters truncated and the Visual FoxPro label caption is only 250 characters after the carriage returns are removed.

Steps to Reproduce Behavior

1. Create a screen in FoxPro 2.6 for Windows and put a label on it with as many characters as it will allow to be typed it. Press the ENTER key when needed to create new lines.



2. Save the screen. You may want to count the number of characters that were typed in.



3. Open the screen in Visual FoxPro 6.0. Do a Functional conversion when prompted to convert the form.

Additional query words:

Keywords : kbOOP kbMiscTools kbVFp600 kbVFp600bug kbXBase kbVFP600sp3 kbGrpFox
Version : WINDOWS:6.0
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbbug