The negative value for the third parameter doesn't mean "count backwards",
it means an ending position.  So STR(text,2,5) means start in position two
and extract a 5-character string, and STR(text,2,-5) means start in position
2 and end in position 5 (4 characters).  In your example the ending position
is before the starting position, which is invalid.

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul H Christidis [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, January 15, 2001 2:44 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: STR function broken in 6.0 pp2


Used the following commands to extract a substring:

:setvar indx 8
:setvar text "abcdefgh"
:setvar subt STR(text, indx, -4)
:showvar subt
SUBT =
:echo ![LEN(subt)]
0

According to the help text of the STR function, the above should have
assigned the string "efgh" to the variable 'subt'.  Instead it assigned a
'null' string to it.

Anyone else has encountered the above.

Regards
Paul Christidis