Re: RdLine with variable length field

[Barbara Morris <bmorris@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Jon Paris wrote:
> ...
> What did surprise me - although it makes sense too - is that if the 
> length of the field is reduced, that the now unused positions are not 
> blanked. I was sure that Barbara had told me a long time back that the 
> back end was blanked when the length was reduced - but this code makes 
> it look like that is not the case - at least currently.
> ...

I'm pretty sure that it has always worked the way it works now, by 
design.  Since the characters following the current length of data are 
irrelevant, there's no need to set them to a particular value.

Setting the length shorter is similar to assigning a new shorter value.

   testVar = 'abcde';
   testVar = 'abc';

The second assignment just sets the length to 3 and the first three 
characters to 'abc'; it doesn't change the 'de' to blanks.