Hacker’s Guide to Visual FoxPro
An irreverent look at how Visual FoxPro really works. Tells you the inside scoop on every command, function, property, event and method of Visual FoxPro.
SET CLEAR
This is an obscure command related to an obsolete capability. It determines whether or not the main window is cleared when you use a format file.
Usage
SET CLEAR ON | OFF
Format files were perhaps the first attempt at making it easy to provide attractive input screens. A format file contains a bunch of SAYs and GETs, which are used as a template for the EDIT command (and some other related commands). You establish the format file with SET FORMAT, then when you issue EDIT or APPEND, the input fields conform to the definitions in the format file.
SET CLEAR ON indicates that the main window should be cleared when you use the format file.
SET CLEAR OFF leaves the main window alone.
We can’t see any reason to use this command. Format files are several generations obsolete.