Knowledge Base

PRB: ORDER BY Field in Result Set Without Being in Field List

Article ID: 143249

Article Last Modified on 9/30/2003

Microsoft Visual FoxPro 3.0 Standard Edition
Microsoft Visual FoxPro 3.0b Standard Edition

This article was previously published under Q143249

SYMPTOMS

When using the ORDER BY clause of a SQL SELECT statement, you must include the the ORDER BY field in the field list. If the ORDER BY field is not included in the field list, it is added by FoxPro without an error.

STATUS

This behavior is by design. It is clearly documented in the Language Reference and help file that the ORDER BY field must be in the field list. The following quote is from the help file under the SELECT SQL topic:

ORDER BY sorts query results based on data in one or more columns. Each Order_Item must correspond to a column in the query results

MORE INFORMATION

Steps to Reproduce Behavior

Enter the following command in the Command Window:

   SELECT last_name FROM samples/data/employee ORDER BY emp_id

Notice that both last_name and emp_id are in the cursor even though the last_name field was the only field in the field list.

Additional query words: VFoxWin

Keywords: KB143249