FoxExtends

Functions Visual FoxPro 9 never had: text formatting with placeholders, GUIDs, enums, regular expressions, ADIR() and AFIELDS() with named properties, and a password box. One .prg, nothing to initialise.

Install

foxpack add foxextends

SET PROCEDURE TO FoxExtends.prg ADDITIVE

That is all: call the functions. Nothing is compiled, nothing is left on _VFP or on disk.

Example

SET PROCEDURE TO FoxExtends.prg ADDITIVE

? PRINTF("${0} has ${1} items\tTotal: ${2}", "Cart", 3, 59.90)
? NEWGUID()                              && 4C4EC5EE-5B92-4E70-B9D8-D1A8A2FA2ABE

LOCAL loColor, laCodes[1], loFiles, loFile
loColor = ENUM("Red", "Green", "Blue")
? loColor.Green                          && 2

? MATCH("Invoice 2026-0042", "\d{4}-\d{4}")    && .T.
? AMATCH(@laCodes, "A1 B22 C333", "\d+")       && 3: laCodes holds "1", "22", "333"

loFiles = ADIROBJ("*.prg")
FOR EACH loFile IN loFiles
	? loFile.file_name, loFile.file_size
ENDFOR

API

PRINTF(cFormat [, v0, v1, ... v19])

Returns cFormat with each ${n} replaced by the n-th value, counting from 0, as TRANSFORM() writes it. The same placeholder may appear several times and in any order. A placeholder with no value stays as written.

Escapes in cFormat: \t (tab), \r, \n, \", \' and \\ (one backslash). Any other \x stays as written. The values go in as they are: a value with \n in it is not escaped.

? PRINTF("${1}, ${0}", "Ana", "Hello")       && Hello, Ana
? PRINTF("C:\\temp\\${0}", "out.txt")        && C:\temp\out.txt

NEWGUID()

A new GUID as 36 characters, without braces: "4C4EC5EE-5B92-4E70-B9D8-D1A8A2FA2ABE".

ENUM(cName1 [, cName2, ... cName26])

An object with one property per name, numbered from 1. A name that is not a valid identifier, or that is repeated, raises an error.

loStatus = ENUM("Draft", "Sent", "Paid")
IF lnStatus = loStatus.Paid

REVERSE(cText)

The text backwards, spaces included: REVERSE("ab ") is " ba".

MATCH(cText, cPattern [, lCaseSensitive])

.T. if the regular expression matches somewhere in the text. Case is ignored unless lCaseSensitive is .T..

AMATCH(@aMatches, cText, cPattern [, lCaseSensitive])

Fills the array with every match, in order, and returns how many. With no match it returns 0 and leaves one empty element, like ALINES().

LOCAL laEmails[1], lnI
FOR lnI = 1 TO AMATCH(@laEmails, lcText, "[\w.]+@[\w.]+\.\w+")
	? laEmails[lnI]
NEXT

MATCH and AMATCH need VBScript.RegExp, which comes with Windows today but which Microsoft has announced it is retiring. On a machine without it they raise an error that says so. The pattern syntax is VBScript's (the same as JavaScript's); an invalid pattern raises an OLE error.

ADIROBJ([cFileSkeleton [, cAttribute [, nFlags]]])

ADIR() as a Collection of objects, one per file, with file_name, file_size, date_last_modified, time_last_modified and file_attributes. The parameters are those of ADIR(); with none, every file of the current folder.

AFIELDSOBJ([cAlias | nWorkArea])

AFIELDS() as a Collection of objects, one per field, with the 18 columns of AFIELDS() as properties: name, field_type, field_width, decimal_places, null_allowed, code_page_translation_not_allowed, field_validation_expression, field_validation_text, field_default_value, table_validation_expression, table_validation_text, long_table_name, insert_trigger_expression, update_trigger_expression, delete_trigger_expression, table_comment, next_value_for_autoincrementing, step_for_autoincrementing. The current work area when omitted.

Both return a Collection, so LinqVFP queries them:

loQ = Linq(ADIROBJ("*.prg"))
loQ.Where("x => x.file_size > 50000")

SECRETBOX([cPrompt [, cCaption]])

A modal dialog with a hidden text box. Returns what was typed (trimmed), or "" if the person pressed Cancel. The caption is _SCREEN.Caption when omitted.

lcPassword = SECRETBOX("Password for the server:", "Sign in")

It waits for a person: do not call it from code that runs unattended (a service, a web request, a scheduled task).

FoxExtendsVersion()

"3.0.0".

Pitfalls

• Errors raise. A wrong argument (a number where a text goes, an invalid ENUM name, a bad pattern) raises a VFP error you can catch with TRY; nothing shows a message box, except SECRETBOX, which is a dialog on purpose.
• ADIROBJ and AFIELDSOBJ return a Collection, not an array: loop with FOR EACH loX IN loCollection, or FOR i = 1 TO loCollection.Count.
• AMATCH needs the array by reference: AMATCH(@laMatches, ...), with the @.

Upgrading from 2.x

3.0 keeps only what no other library of the stack does, and is MIT instead of GPL-3.

• No newFoxExtends(): SET PROCEDURE TO FoxExtends.prg is enough. 2.x compiled the library into %TEMP% on every start (about 0.5 s), left the .fxp there, hung three objects on _VFP and showed message boxes on errors. The prefix and the obj mode are gone with it.
• What moved, and where:

2.x	Use instead
ALIST, APUSH, APOP, ASPLIT, AJOIN, ASLICE, ALEFT, ARIGHT, ASUBSTR, ACONCAT, AREVERSE, AUNIQUE, STRINGLIST, ARGS, APARAMS	FoxCollection: TArray
HASHTABLE, HASKEY, ADDKEY, REMOVEKEY, GETVALUE, PAIR	FoxCollection: TDictionary
AMAP, AFILTER, AEVERY, FOREACH, AUNION, AINTERSECT, AEXCEPT	LinqVFP
JSONTOSTR, STRTOJSON, SetFoxExtendsJsonProvider	JSONFox
ACLONE, AKEYS, CLAMP	VFP itself: ACOPY(), AMEMBERS(), SUBSTR()
ANYTOSTR, AZIP	Gone

• Changed: AMATCH fills an array by reference with every match and returns the count (2.x returned one match, the last by default). ADIROBJ and AFIELDSOBJ return a Collection. REVERSE keeps the spaces (2.x dropped the text after leading spaces). PRINTF no longer escapes the values, and takes up to 20.

Tests

From the repository folder:

foxproof run --prg tests\FoxExtendsTests.prg

License

MIT. See LICENSE.