Command JOIN Foundation
Joins records from two work areas and writes the results into a new file.
JOIN WITH <cAlias> TO <cFilename> ;
[FOR <lCondition>]
[FIELDS <cFieldname,...>]
The file command JOIN combines records from two work areas and writes the resulting records to a file. The structure of the target file can optionally be defined by specifying field names using the option FIELDS. The field names from the second work area must be prefixed by the alias name (Alias->Fieldname). If FIELDS is not specified, all fields from both work areas are copied into the target file. If duplicate field names appear, the field from the current work area is used.
The command JOIN starts with the first record in the current work area and tests the FOR condition for each record in the second work area. If the condition results in the value .T. (true), a new data record is added to the target file. After the last record in the second work area is reached, the record pointer in the current work area is advanced to the next record and the entire process is repeated for each record in the current work area until the last record is reached. The entire operation can be very time consuming, because the number of individual record pointer movements is equal to the product of the number of records in each of the source work areas. Also, JOIN can create very large files if sufficient limitations are not provided by the FOR condition.
JOIN does not process records marked for deletion when SET DELETED is turned ON. Also, no records filtered out by a filter condition in either of the two source work areas are processed. When SET DELETED is turned OFF, records with deletion flags are considered. However, deletion flags are not copied into the target file.
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