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This little routine will draw the predetermined box using the Clipper BOX command if compiled or the DBIII+ @ y1,x1 TO y2,x2 command if not. The ‘frame’ variable allows the characters to be used to construct the box to be predetermined with Clipper, in DBIII+ you’re stuck with single line box drawing. As that little lot compiles, Clipper checks out the @ y1,x1 TO y2,x2 line as am error, but as it never executes the code it doesn’t matter.

Another little point from the above, the DO .. WITH and the matching Parameters in the procedure are strictly speaking superfluous in this case as both DBIII+ and Clipper will pass parameters from a higher level routine to a lower, and as parameters are not passed back to the higher routine, it was not necessary to explicitly state them. I’ve only included them for completeness.

There are, of course dozens of little differences between DBIII+ and Clipper, almost all are insignificant but need to be kept in mind when programming. Clipper I find is almost ideal (I haven’t got round Quicksilver yet). I’ve ordered it up grade to bring my clipper more up to date and, perhaps to remove the odd bug I’ve found (I’ve found two, and one is most frustrating) and to improve compatibility with DBIII+, but to be honest, I find that there is very little which can not be achieved with Clipper which can’t be persuaded to work with a little imagination.

I suppose the majority of my programming effort is conducted in a combination of DBIII+ and Clipper these days and I finished both comfortable and easy to work with.

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