Epidata Friends,
Yves gave a good work around on the id fields with leading zeros. I was suffering from the very same problem and did not stop to think on a work around. I did try this here with a data of mine and I have a another sugestion.
It came to my attention that if the fieldnum has a autoserach command and the typer goes to edit a record already in the dataset then the fieldnum is deleted by the second chk command below. Perhaps a HELP command is more nice.
FIELDNUM BEFORE ENTRY fieldnum=integer(fieldchar) goto nextvariable END autosearch list fieldnum END
NEXTVARIABLE BEFORE ENTRY IF (fieldnum <> integer(fieldchar)) THEN HELP "PERHAPS THERE ARE SOME NON INTEGER CHARACTERS. CONSIDER REVISING!" ENDIF END
This will call the attention of the typer and will not delete the data in the field if the record is to be edited.
Best regards.
Abraço forte e que a força esteja com você, Pedro Emmanuel