String to Int conversion for SQL with Paradox

[stephenwales]

I have a field in a Paradox table that is stored as an Alphanumeric. It was done this way so that values without a sign, and with signs, both "-" and "+" could be displayed without special code.

Values could be: 1, 5, -2, +3 etc.

Now, it's coming to bite me in the behind.

I have a user of the application who wants to be able to search for values between, say, 1 & 5. So when they do a query:

where skill >= "1" and <= "5"

they are getting values like 10, 11 & 12 returned as valid.

Is there some way to do something like:

Where StrToInt(skill) >= 1 and StrToInt(skill> <= 5 ?

I'm using Delphi 5 Professional with Paradox 7 tables on Windows XP Professional.

Thanks
Steve

 

[buho]

You can try to format your quantities to have them collated in the right order in ASCII: 001, 002, 003... 010... 020... 100; but you are making things unnecesarilly convoluted.

You are working with numbers, the best solution is using numbers.

buho (A).

 

[stephenwales]

Unfortunately, since I need to differentiate between a base number like "5" and a modifier of say, "+5", I didn't see any way to do that without going alpha.

If I do numeric fields, they effecively become the same thing.

So, am I totally up the creek then?

Steve

 

[buho]

Use a type field to differentiate skills from modifiers or use a master-detail table structure for skills and modifiers (the last is the best, IMO, pretty expandable).

Can't say more with the knowledge I have about your problem. Feel free to explain it with more detail.

And drop Paradox, it is dead. Go for ADO.

buho (A).

 

[stephenwales]

It's a low priority issue, I'll talk to the user and see how big of a deal it is - if it's really worth all that Dev time to get around a very rarely used search.

Thanks
Steve