>Hi Folks.
>
>The "R" Format property. You know, the thing that applies a format mask to data as specified in the InputMask property. The Builders love it. I don't. Phone numbers, for example. If the data is stored as (999) 999-9999 and you use (999) 999-9999 as your InputMask and have R in the Format, you end up with a display that looks like "((99) 9) 99", or something to that effect.
>
>Frankly, I like to store data as formatted so that I don't have to worry about formatting it from whatever front-end I get it from. So the "R" is worse than useless for me.
>
>What do y'all think?

This has been extremely frustrating for me to deal with in creating a new database for my company, and converting all of the old data. The people who built the old database apparently couldn't make up their minds and for some reason stored the phone field for clients unformated (9999999999) while at the same time, stored the fax field formated ( (999) 999-9999 ). A major pain for me to deal with now.

I was pretty frustrated about the R format in VFP when I first started learning it to program this project. I kept getting the "((99) 9) 99" that you mentioned. Once I got it figured out though, (and figured out that half of my problem in learning it was actually the old screwed up data I was using) I prefer to store it unformated. This goes for fields such as Social Security numbers too. We actually display phone numbers in different ways for different reports. For example, "1 (800) 999-9999" or "1-800-999-9999". I don't know why they don't want to be consitent, but they pay me to do what they want...

Anyway, it for this reason that I prefer the data to be stored unformatted. You can display it any way you want without having to worry about stripping characters you may not want.

Just my inexperienced opinion...