Formatting a Social Security Number Field
This technote explains how to format a valid social security number field. To do this, the field must contain a validation as well as a calculation.
The validation ensures that the user has typed in 9 digits. After the user enters data into the field, the validation uses the SBL function FN numeric to look at only numeric values entered into the field. If there are more or less than 9 digits, a message displays.
Once the user has correctly entered 9 digits, the calculation formats the data. Using SBL's string parsing commands, the calculation takes the first 3 digits and concatenates a "-" to it followed by the next 2 digits, another "-" and the last 4 digits.
The following steps outline this process.
Create a text field of 11 characters. In this example, the field name is SSNum and the file name is Employee.
Add the following validation:
	LEN ( FN numeric(SSNum.Employee)) = 9 ELSE "The Social Security Number must 		have 9 digits, you entered " + LTRIM$ ( STR$ ( LEN ( FN 		numeric(SSNum.Employee)),"99"))
Add the following calculation:
	LEFT$ ( FN numeric (SSNum.Employee),3) + "-" + MID$ ( FN numeric 		(SSNum.Employee),4,2) + "-" + MID$ ( FN numeric (SSNum.Employee),6,4)
Make sure that after typing in the validation and calculation to turn Read-Only off.
















Program:	Superbase	
Versions:	2.0
Date:	January 28, 1993		
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