>I'm fairly new to VFP and I'm having a few problems. Could some kind soul explain to me what is going on here?
>
>Problem 1
>I have a field - Folio_Id displayed on a table maintenance form. It's numeric and has a length of 6, no decimal places.
>I want for the user to be able to enter from 1 to 6 digits and have it filled with leading zeros when they leave the field.
>
>If I specify a Format code of 'L' on the field, when I enter the first digit, the field then fills with TRAILING zeros !?!
>It doesn't matter whether I put the format code in the table designer display format or in the textbox format property
>of the form (or both!) - I cant get any leading zeros noway, nohow!
>
>If I remove the format codes and enter '1234567', on hitting '7' the field changes to '100000' - ie 7 digits, 6 trailing zeros!
>
>If I enter '123' the field is displayed right-justified as expected. If I now highlight the value and start typing or hit 'delete', I can only enter 3 digits before focus moves off the field !?!
>
>Is there some basic tenet in the use of numeric fields I'm missing here?
>Since this field is a key and not to be used in any kind of arithmetic I suppose I should I be using a Character datatype? But then how would I get leading zeros without jumping through hoops?
>

Are you populating the fields with you tables? If not, the form will assume that the text box is a character. Place a 0 in the value property of the textbox to force it to numeric. Place an 'L' in the Format Property, this will give you leading zeros. I just tried and it works for me.

>
>Problem 4
>The thing that is really bugging me - unrelated to the above, is the frequency with which VFP5 is crashing.
>This invariably happens soon after I encounter a runtime error in my testing. I can generally cancel the program and close all files, but the next time I rebuild the app, VFP will likely cause an exception error and crash - Dr. Watson I presume!
>A couple of developers I've spoken to say this hardly ever happens to them. I see it several times a day.
>I've tried reinstalling, maximizing Windows Virtual memory size,etc.
>I'm using VFP 5 Prof. Ed. running on NT Workstation 4. Any ideas why this might be happening?

I am running the same OS as you are running and I don't seem to have these problems, perhaps there is an setting in NT that you need to change.

Ed