My officemate needed to add a primary key to an @10,000 record database.
He added PKEY a DateTime field.
He figured, since users add records by an Add button, then fill in the rest; Replacing PKEY with DATETIME() on add is fine. I wonder if that is enough.

Anyway, after he added the field PKEY, he wrote a small prg to update the @10,000 records:

USE Mtg EXCLUSIVE
ldCount = {^2001-01-01 12:00:00AM}
SCAN
   REPLACE PKey WITH ldCount
   ldCount = ldCount+1
ENDSCAN

When he tried to add a primary index on PKey, he got the uniqueness violated error.
He is running VFP 6.0 SP5 and Win 2000 SP1.
(This is from memory.)
I queried the database, and found 26 PKey dups. Starting around record 92000, and about every 7th or 8th record thereafter; there was a dup, then a skip.

I mean: RecNo             PKey
        92008 {^2001-01-08 09:20:08AM} 
        92009 {^2001-01-08 09:20:08AM} 
        92010 {^2001-01-08 09:20:10AM} 

I fixed this by changing his prg to: REPLACE ALL PKey WITH ldCount+RECNO()
But, I am wondering if anyone has encountered, or can explain this dupping.
It is like the REPLACE and the var update got confused.

Thanks in advance,
Carol Dewar
Magram Computer Services