Can any expert on this list explain just what is happening with Formspec?

I have a field on a form which is defined as CHAR, 8 characters.  there
is no edit spec for this field and it is just passed forward to the
application.  When I enter "29.02.00"  (which is a date)  then VPLUS
gives me an error "The field must be a valid date, in DMY order (Year =
yy)"  I know its VPLUS because I trapped everything using TRAX.  If I
then enter "29022000" then VPLUS accepts the field contents but my
application rejects it which I would expect.  It seems obvious that VPLUS
is treating this field as a date.  Now I know I'm using it as a date but
as the DTYPE in VPLUS is CHAR and there is no edit spec, how does VPLUS
know to treat it as a date?

The only thing I can think of is that the name of the field is being
used, its called "DocDate".

To test this supposition, I changed the name (only the name) of the field
to "DDDDDD", recompiled the form and reran the same version of my
application program with a file equate to the new form file.  This time,
VPLUS did not reject the "29.02.00" when it was input!

Is this what I should expect?  I can't find anything in the manual that
says a field is processed according to its name rather than the DTYPE.

What am I doing wrong?  What is the obvious item that I'm missing?


help............