Bug Report: Flag Manager "Illegal Character" Error

[Roy Sprunger 0]

Years ago I originally reported this to the TMG-L list. I think it was ver. 4.0 Gold. With ver. 7.04 Gold, I still get the error box stating "Flag label <label name> contains an illegal character".

 

I can find nothing about this error. Help implies I should be able to use any keyboard character in my label. However, several punctuation keys and special characters cause this error. I did not test all the punctuation and special characters, but these do cause the error.

 

: ; , [ ] |

 

Since this is a narrative description field, I should be able to use any keyboard characters OR there should be an entry in the Help telling me which keys are reserved.

 

When I initially created my custom flags, TMG accepted them as I had typed them in. But now that I want to edit them, I get the error message. Here are a few examples.

GENE: Sprunger, Christian complete

GENE: Owens, Uriah

GENE: Scoville, Edward complete

 

But when I changed the punctuation, TMG accepted it as shown in the next example.

 

GENE> Sprunger Peter complete

 

While it may be a small thing, it prevents me from taking further advantage of custom flags, as I see no advantage in being unable to use the descriptions that I use in other areas.

 

 

Roy Sprunger

anetsprungen

[Jim Byram 0]

Help says that you can't use a comma in a flag name.

 

"Flag names (up to 51 characters) and values (one character) can be entered using upper or lower case letters, numbers, and any characters except comma. A pound sign (#) can be used in the values section, but not in the name. Spaces can be used in the name, but not as a value."

 

There appear to be other limitations from your tests.

[Roy Sprunger 0]

Help says that you can't use a comma in a flag name.

 

"Flag names (up to 51 characters) and values (one character) can be entered using upper or lower case letters, numbers, and any characters except comma. A pound sign (#) can be used in the values section, but not in the name. Spaces can be used in the name, but not as a value."

 

There appear to be other limitations from your tests.

 

Thanks, Jim. I must have been staring at the monitor for too long.

 

I looked at the page where it is located and initially, I still didn't see it. I must have read it three times before it sunk in. I also found a 2005 message Terry Reigel posted in which he said,

 

Yes - the problem is use of special characters in the flag names.

Currently the following cannot be used in flag names:

 

- " ' : ; [ ] { } \ ` ~ |

 

Some of these will likely work in the next release, and others may not

- don't know yet which.

 

I have added a note to my growing list of annotations that the phrase "any characters except comma" is still incorrect.

 

Roy

[Roy Sprunger 0]

I found a 2005 message Terry Reigel posted in which he said,

Yes - the problem is use of special characters in the flag names.

Currently the following cannot be used in flag names:

 

- " ' : ; [ ] { } \ ` ~ |

 

Some of these will likely work in the next release, and others may not

- don't know yet which.

 

There have been several releases since this was originally posted in 2005.

 

When will something be done to either fix the program or change the Help file? Help still states, "Flag names (up to 51 characters) and values (one character) can be entered using upper or lower case letters, numbers, and any characters except comma. A pound sign (#) can be used in the values section, but not in the name. Spaces can be used in the name, but not as a value."

 

I believe a reasonable person would expect that to mean ANY keyboard character. But when there are limitations or restrictions, those should be clearly stated.

 

 

Roy

[Jim Byram 0]

I guess that the only way to deal with this is to change help to be more imprecise. There is no way to list all characters that don't work.

[John Cardinal 0]

Maybe list the valid characters rather than the invalid ones?

[Roy Sprunger 0]

Maybe list the valid characters rather than the invalid ones?

 

Thanks, Jim & John. I phrased the question as I did hoping somebody from the team that works on the program would comment, as they are the only ones who can answer the question, "When will something be done to either fix the program or change the Help file?"

 

My solution was to annotate the help file entry with the excluded special characters.

 

However, it defies explanation for why a "label" should have any limitations. By their very nature, they are simply "labels" used to name something. To the best of my knowledge, TMG does not execute any programming code that uses the label, which would make any code that inhibits the use of any keyboard character, bad code writing, or at the very least, negligent. On the other hand, I can also see this as being so low on a list priority fixes as to be negligible in the greater scheme of things.

 

Still, it is pushing six years now since this bug was identified. That is a long time to allow any bug to persist. And I have not seen any boards dedicated to reporting bugs.

 

 

Roy

Edited October 12, 2010 by Roy Sprunger

[John Cardinal 0]

Jim has influence over the Help file contents so he can probably update it.

 

If I recall correctly, in previous versions of TMG, flag labels were used as the actual field names where the flag values were stored in the database table. The names were thus restricted to the characters that are valid for VFP fields. That's been changed, but it may be the source of the limitation. In any case, the program issues an error message and so I think it's quite likely that there is (or was) a technical reason for a limitation on the characters in the name. Calling it negligent or bad code is inappropriate.