AFIELDS( ) Function
Places information about the structure of the current table into an array and returns the number of fields in the table.
AFIELDS( ArrayName [, nWorkArea | cTableAlias ] )
Parameters
ArrayName
Specifies an array into which information about the table structure is placed.If the array you specify does not exist, Visual FoxPro automatically creates it. If the array exists and is not large enough to contain all the information returned by AFIELDS( ), the size of the array is automatically increased to accommodate the information.
nWorkArea
Specifies the work area of the table for which structure information is placed into an array.cTableAlias
Specifies the alias of the table for which structure information is placed into an array.If you omit nWorkArea and cTableAlias, structure information is placed in an array for the table in the currently selected work area.
Return Values
Numeric data type. AFIELDS( ) returns the number of fields in the table. The array contains 18 columns and has the same number of rows as fields in the table.
The following table describes the content of each column in the first row of the array and the data type of the information stored in each column. Values for table-specific properties in columns 10 through 16 only appear in the first row of the array. One row is created for each field in the table.
Column number | Field info | Data type |
---|---|---|
1 | Field name | Character |
2 | Field type:
C = Character D = Date L = Logical M = Memo N = Numeric F = Float I = Integer B = Double Y = Currency T = DateTime G = General |
Character |
3 | Field width | Numeric |
4 | Decimal places | Numeric |
5 | Null values allowed | Logical |
6 | Code page translation not allowed | Logical |
7 | Field validation expression | Character |
8 | Field validation text | Character |
9 | Field default value | Character |
10 | Table validation expression | Character |
11 | Table validation text | Character |
12 | Long table name | Character |
13 | Insert trigger expression | Character |
14 | Update trigger expression | Character |
15 | Delete trigger expression | Character |
16 | Table comment | Character |
17 | NextValue for autoincrementing | Numeric |
18 | Step for autoincrementing | Numeric |
Remarks
If the fields in the table use autoincrementing, the Step value is greater than 0.
You can use COPY STRUCTURE EXTENDED to place similar information into a table instead of an array.
Example
The following example creates an array named gaMyArray
, which contains information about the fields in the Customer
table. The names of the fields are displayed.
CLOSE DATABASES
OPEN DATABASE (HOME(2) + 'Data\testdata')
USE Customer && Open Customer table.
gnFieldcount = AFIELDS(gaMyArray) && Create array.
CLEAR
FOR nCount = 1 TO gnFieldcount
? gaMyArray(nCount,1) && Display field names.
ENDFOR
See Also
ADEL( ) | ADIR( ) | AELEMENT( ) | AINS( ) | ALEN( ) | ALTER TABLE – SQL | ASCAN( ) | ASORT( ) | ASUBSCRIPT( ) | Autoincrementing Field Values in Tables | COPY STRUCTURE EXTENDED | CREATE | CREATE TABLE | DIMENSION