>>>>>While not a large table about 2000-3000 records it has losts of fields. He asked how hard
>>>>>would it be do re-sequence the fields so they are sequnecial (i.e. nolonger as missing
>>>>>values). Is there an efficent way of doing this? If so what is it?
>>>>
>>>>Would it work for you to make copies of those tables, associate them with a DBC, set cascading
>>>>referential integrity on updates, make your changes, and then copy the data back to the original
>>>>tables?
>>>
>>>My question is once I do that what is the best way to resequence the key field which is defined
>>>as a 9 character field, but is really a nine digit value with leading zeros, i.e. the simplest method
>>>the comes mind is in a SCAN loop start at the first record and for each record replace the
>>>current value of the key field with an integer value converted into a 9 character value with leading
>>>zeros.
>>>
>>>Is this the best approach or is there a better one?
>>>
>>>The key field is not linked to any other table in any way (other fields are, but they are used
>>>purely as decodes in reports).
>>
>>Oh, I assumed you meant that the key field appeared in other tables: that's why I suggested using
>>referential integrity to make the updates. Yeah, your method above should work.
>
>Thanks for reply. I wrote a quick program and it seems to work.

Great. :-) Did you use the PADL() function to get the leading zeros, or did you add them another way?