Transform() of simple numeric values

[stefan.ungemach]

Probably I got something wrong, but can anyone please explain this:

 

transform.png (5.37 KiB) Viewed 980 times

Lots of code from VO which format numeric values suddenly produce inexplicable results because they deliver not only nonsense from a certein value of the numeric parameter but also write some utf16 code into the result.

[Chris]

Hi Stefan,

I could not reproduce this, but I'm sure it has to do with the settings used in the app. Can you please try reproducing this in a small standalone sample and send it to have a look?

[stefan.ungemach]

Playing around with the settings didn't change anything, but maybe it helps to know that 

transform( fValue, "999,999" )

produces a chr(0) instead of the commas. If fValue<=999 there is no comma and the result is ok. If it is 1000 there would be a comma and the result is truncated there in the debugger because of the chr(0).

[Chris]

Hi Stefan,

Understood, but can you please generate a small standalone sample showing this behavior so we can reproduce it here and fix it?

[stefan.ungemach]

Please consider it (almost) solved, I found the problem: Hidden deeply in our code there was a new

                SetThousandSep(Asc(""))

which caused the problem.

But this raises another little question: Speaking with the developer I understand that he wanted to make temporarily sure there are no thousand separators in the result of any transformations. What he intended to get was just nothing between the digits instead of a chr(0). The XSharp behaviour here is exactly the same as in VO, so we don't have a bug - but is there a global setting allowing the given goal of

transform(1000,"999,999,999")

giving just "     1000" ?

[Chris]

Hi Stefan,

Only way I can think of, is to redefine Transform() in your code, so that it adjusts the result, based on a global setting, something like:

GLOBAL glRemoveSeparatorsFromTransform AS LOGIC

FUNCTION Transform(fValue AS FLOAT, cPic AS STRING) AS STRING
    LOCAL cOriginal AS STRING
    cOriginal := XSharp.RT.Functions.Transform(fValue, cPic) // get the result from the original Transform() from the X# runtime
    IF glRemoveSeparatorsFromTransform
        RETURN cOriginal:Replace("." , "") // or ",", depending what you use for thousands separator
    END IF
RETURN cOriginal
FUNCTION Transform(uValue AS USUAL, cPic AS STRING) AS STRING
    LOCAL cOriginal AS STRING
    cOriginal := XSharp.RT.Functions.Transform(uValue, cPic)
    IF glRemoveSeparatorsFromTransform .and. IsNumeric(uValue)
        RETURN cOriginal:Replace("." , "")
    END IF
RETURN cOriginal

If you put this in a base lib, then all of your own calls to Transform() will resolve to this one and should have the result you need. Problem is that when Transform() is called from within the SDK code (not from your code that you compile), then the original Transform() will still be called, not sure if this is a problem for what you need this for..

[robert]

Stefan
Chris his solution is probbably the best for you.
But I do not understand why you would want to globally override this behavior.
That does not make sense to me at all.
When I specify in my code

Code: Select all

transform( fValue, "999,999" ) 

then it is clear that I want a thousand separator.
No global setting should try to prevent that.

Robert

[stefan.ungemach]

Robert,

it does make sense if you have a generic serializer (our is vaguely based on the XMLParser class of Anthony Smith) whose results may be passed to a SQL statement. According to the comments there seem to be restrictions in some dialects regarding separators in the string representation of numeric values. However I understand that this should be handled on a str() base and I don't really understand why that matters at all. But our problem can be solved by simply saving the result of getThousandSep() and restore it after serialisation anyway, which hadn't been done so far.