Since noticing the 4D function "Is field number valid”, making it easy to detect deleted fields, I thought field numbers would not be reused. It turns out this is not the case. A bit of testing reveals that 4D does not even clear the data when deleting a field, and still references data by field number, which means after deleting a field, a newly created field is “initialized" with the old data!
And here I thought 4D was making some progress toward sensibility. The only thing they needed to do to make deleting fields work for any definition of “properly” is create new fields with a new freaking number. How do you ever get to “hey, let’s reuse field numbers, so new fields can have unexpected data like no other database engine ever”. If the idea was to allow the developer to recreate an accidentally deleted field, that rare case should be a separate option, not the default. Jim Crate ********************************************************************** 4D Internet Users Group (4D iNUG) FAQ: http://lists.4d.com/faqnug.html Archive: http://lists.4d.com/archives.html Options: http://lists.4d.com/mailman/options/4d_tech Unsub: mailto:[email protected] **********************************************************************
