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<h1 class="title">Introduction</h1>
<p class="para">
These functions allow you to access records stored in dBase-format
(dbf) databases.
</p>
<p class="para">
dBase files are simple sequential files of fixed length records.
Records are appended to the end of the file and delete records are
kept until you call <span class="function"><a href="function.dbase-pack.html" class="function">dbase_pack()</a></span>.
</p>
<p class="para">
The types of dBase fields available are:
<table class="doctable table">
<caption><strong>Available types of fields</strong></caption>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Field</th>
<th>dBase Type</th>
<th>Format</th>
<th>Additional information</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody class="tbody">
<tr>
<td><em>M</em></td>
<td>Memo</td>
<td>n/a</td>
<td>This type is not supported by PHP, such field will be ignored</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>D</em></td>
<td>Date</td>
<td><em>YYYYMMDD</em></td>
<td>The field length is limited to 8</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>N</em></td>
<td>Number</td>
<td>A number</td>
<td>
You must declare a length and a precision (the number of digits
after the decimal point)
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>C</em></td>
<td>String</td>
<td>A string</td>
<td>You must declare a length. When retrieving data, the string
will be right-padded with spaces to fit the declared length.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>L</em></td>
<td>Boolean</td>
<td><em>T</em> or <em>Y</em> for <strong><code>TRUE</code></strong>,
<em>F</em> or <em>N</em> for <strong><code>FALSE</code></strong></td>
<td>Stored and returned as an integer (1 or 0)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>F</em></td>
<td>Float</td>
<td>A float number</td>
<td>Support for this type of field was added in PHP 5.2.0</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</p>
<blockquote class="note"><p><strong class="note">Note</strong>:
<p class="para">
This extension has been moved to the
<a href="http://pecl.php.net/" class="link external">» PECL</a> repository and is no longer bundled with
PHP as of PHP 5.3.0.
</p>
</p></blockquote>
<div class="warning"><strong class="warning">Warning</strong>
<p class="para">
There is no support for indexes or memo fields. There is no
support for locking, too. Two concurrent web server processes
modifying the same dBase file will very likely ruin your database.
</p>
<p class="para">
We recommend that you do not use dBase files as your production
database. Choose any real SQL server instead; <a href="http://www.mysql.com/" class="link external">» MySQL</a> or <a href="http://www.postgresql.org/" class="link external">» Postgres</a>
are common choices with PHP. dBase support is here to allow you to
import and export data to and from your web database, because the
file format is commonly understood by Windows spreadsheets and
organizers.
</p>
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