CFOG's PIP, October 1988, Volume 7 No. 5, Whole No. 67, page 78
dBase Hint: Report Command
by Mike Rulison
Raleigh Osborne Computer Club
The dBase II Report command is a powerful report generator, but it provides no means of revising a filename.frm file once it has been made. This can be done with a word processor, however, as the file is a very straightforward ASCII format file.
Revising the file with the word processor is especially useful if you want to make significant reorganization, such as moving the last column several columns to the left. That is readily accomplished with a block move, starting with the line that contains field width and field name or expression, followed by the column heading (or blank line if this is omitted), and, if the field is numeric and you have asked for totals, a 'Y' or 'N' depending on whether you want totals for that field. (This adds up to 2 or 3 lines.)
Be careful, however, in revising such a file NOT to allow a blank line at the top of the file. Such blanks will result program failure and messages about format or syntax errors. Remember this also should you decide to create your filename.frm file totally with a text editor, rather than with the dBase II Report command. It is relatively easy to do that, too.