Re: conversion from xy to dbf

["Patricia M. Godfrey" PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx]

Bill Mallon wrote:
> Excel is a pretty good program . ... FoxPro... in that database
> language the command to import an XyWrite file would be to open a
> dummy database with the appropriate fields and then use the command:
>
> APPEND FROM C:\*\*\*.TXT DELIMITED WITH TAB
Excel is about the only halfway decent thing MicroSludge makes. But all
over the world, people use spreadsheets for things that should really be
in databases, becuase spreadsheets are easy and work, and databases are
difficult--and don't work as they should. For example, dBase 5 for DOS
will NOT append with Tab delimited; in fact, it won't even output a tab
character (see my post of a while back about using XyWrite as a dBase
programming editor to embed Xy formatting code in a report or other
output file). I have copy of FoxPro (MicroSoft Visual for Win 95,
copyright 1996; I thought getting an early version, from before M$ had
had it too long, I could avoid the Redmond bloat and bugs), but it
relies on SQL to link tables, and uses (apparently) an early version of
SQL in which the only way to link more than two tables is to first do a
join of A and B, then join the resulting C to D, and so on. All of which
flies in the face of the principle of normalization: it positively wants
you to create tables that violate normal form. Am now trying Alpha Five,
which _looks_ promising; its programming language seems similar to dBase
(about like Romanian to Latin).
Patricia M. Godfrey