>Hi,
>
>In a form there are several codified fields. A typical one is "Sex", which is stored in the table as "M" of "F", but has Male/Female option buttons. Similarly for marital status and others. The common thread is that none of these codifications are stored in related tables but are handled in code.
>
>In FoxPro DOS I used screen variables to hold the radio button number or caption and filled them in a routine that ran after the scatter each time the recno changed. Data was codified back in the SaveIt routine before the GATHER.
>
>I am new to VFP and wonder which is the most practical way to handle this type of simple situations that do not require a separate table. Should I use a form property to hold the option number? Should I do similar codifying/decodifying in similar routines as before? Should I use the Refresh method?
>
>TIA,
>
>Alex

In VFP, an option button can be bound to a character field in its ControlSource - which will tie to the caption of the selected button.

If you wanted to do this for the M/F optiongroup, you would need to

set the optiongroup.Value to the empty string or "M" or "F",
make the button captions just "M" and "F" and add labels for "Male" and "Female" and line them up with the button captions
I'd go ahead and use "Male" instead of "ale" for the label - it's easier to line up the captions that way. Also, it helps if the optiongroup and buttons and labels have their BackStyle = 0 (Transparent) - at least when lining them up.

HTH