KB178664 - BUG: ? Displays Incorrect Number of Characters to Screen

Article ID: 178664

Article Last Modified on 5/12/2003

Microsoft Visual FoxPro 3.0 Standard Edition
Microsoft Visual FoxPro 3.0b Standard Edition
Microsoft Visual FoxPro 5.0 Standard Edition
Microsoft Visual FoxPro 5.0a
Microsoft Visual FoxPro 6.0 Professional Edition
Microsoft Visual FoxPro 3.0b for Macintosh

This article was previously published under Q178664

SYMPTOMS

Sending output to the desktop with a question mark (?) or @ SAYS may cause incorrect output to appear on the screen. If the variable that is being output is quite long, around 200 characters or greater, the output generated will not be the same as the length of the variable. The number of characters displayed should match the number of characters in the variable.

CAUSE

The Visual FoxPro screen font is set to a proportional font. Different proportional fonts produce different results.

RESOLUTION

Set the Visual FoxPro screen font to a mono-spaced font. Courier New and Foxfont are two fonts that should produce the correct output.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a bug in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article. We are researching this bug and will post new information here in the Microsoft Knowledge Base as it becomes available.

MORE INFORMATION

Steps to Reproduce Behavior

Run the following commands in a program or from the Visual FoxPro Command window:

   _SCREEN.FONTNAME = "Arial"
   _SCREEN.FONTSIZE = 10
   x = REPLICATE('0123456789',25) && Creates a string 250 characters long
   ? LEN(x) && Returns 250
   ? x  && If you count you will get 219

The DISPLAY MEMORY LIKE x command outputs the correct number of characters to the screen.

Additional query words: kbvfp500 kbvfp600

Keywords: kbbug KB178664