How to change the variable length in Progress? - variables

I'm pretty new to progress and I want to ask a question.
How do I change variable (string) length in runtime?
ex.
define variable cname as char.
define variable clen as int.
cname= "".
DO cnts = 1 TO 5.
IF prc[cnts] <> "" THEN DO:
clen = clen + LENGTH(prc[cnts]).
cname = cname + prc[cnts].
END.
END.
Put cname format '???' at 1. /here change variable length/
Thanks for the reply

If the PUT statement is what you want to change, then
PUT UNFORMATTED cname.
will write the entire string out without having to worry about the length of the FORMAT phrase.
If you need something formatted, then
PUT UNFORMATTED STRING(cname, fill("X", clen)).
will do what you want. Look up the "STRING()" function in the ABL Ref docs.

In Progress 4GL all data is variable length.
This is one of the big differences between Progress and lots of other development environments. (And in my opinion a big advantage.)
Each datatype has a default format, which you can override, but that is only for display purposes.
Display format has no bearing on storage.
You can declare a field with a display format of 3 characters:
define variable x as character no-undo format "x(3)".
And then stuff 60 characters into the field. Progress will not complain.
x = "123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890".
It is extremely common for 4gl application code to over-stuff variables and fields.
(If you then use SQL-92 to access the data you will hear much whining and gnashing of teeth from your SQL client. This is easily fixable with the "dbtool" utility.)
You change the display format when you define something:
define variable x as character no-undo format "x(30)".
or when you use it:
put x format "x(15)".
or
display x format "x(43)".
(And in many other ways -- these are just a couple of easy examples.)
Regardless of the display format the length() function will report the actual length of the data.

Related

Is format ####0.000000 different to 0.000000?

I am working on some legacy code at the moment and have come across the following:
FooString = String.Format("{0:####0.000000}", FooDouble)
My question is, is the format string here, ####0.000000 any different from simply 0.000000?
I'm trying to generalize the return type of the function that sets FooDouble and so checking to make sure I don't break existing functionality hence trying to work out what the # add to it here.
I've run a couple tests in a toy program and couldn't see how the result was any different but maybe there's something I'm missing?
From MSDN
The "#" custom format specifier serves as a digit-placeholder symbol.
If the value that is being formatted has a digit in the position where
the "#" symbol appears in the format string, that digit is copied to
the result string. Otherwise, nothing is stored in that position in
the result string.
Note that this specifier never displays a zero that
is not a significant digit, even if zero is the only digit in the
string. It will display zero only if it is a significant digit in the
number that is being displayed.
Because you use one 0 before decimal separator 0.0 - both formats should return same result.

Why are constants used instead of variables?

In what general occasions are constants used instead of variables. I need a few examples.
Thanks in advance.
A variable, as the name implies, varies over time. Variables mostly allocate memory. In your code, when you declare that a value will not change, the compiler can do a series of optimizations (no space is allocated for constants on stack) and this is the foremost advantage of Constants.
Update
You may ask why do we use Constants after all?
It's a good question, actually, we can use literal numbers instead of constants. it does not make any difference for the compiler since it sees both the same. However, in order to have a more readable code (--programming good practice), we'd better use constants.
Using constants, you can also save your time!. To be more specific, take below as an example:
Suppose a rate value for some products in a shopping system (rate value = 8.14). Your system has worked with this constant for several months. But then after some months, you may want to change the rate value, right?. What are you going to do? You have one awful option! Changing all the literals numbers which equal 8.14! But when you declare rate as a constant you just need to change the constant value once and then changes will propagate all over the code. So you see that by using constants you do not need to find 8.14's (literal numbers) and change them one by one.
Constants are used when you want to assign a value that doesn't change. This is helpful because if you try to change this, you will receive an error.
It is also great for readability of the code. A person who reads your code will now know that this particular value will never change.
For example:
$name = 'Danny'; // this could change if I ever changed my name
const SECONDS_IN_MINUTE = 60; // this will never change, so we assign it as a constant
You use a constant, when the value of a variable never changes during the lifetime of your program. Once you defined a constant x, you can't change it's value anymore.
Think of pi. Pi is a constant with value 3.1415. This will never change during your programs lifecyle.
const pi = 3.14159265359
When you use a variable instead, you can change it's value as often as you want to.
int x = 1;
x = 7;

Formatting Short Text as Numbers

I've got a column called Amount, with a lot of numbers looking like this:
67000.00000000000000000000
Some of the columns have 2 numbers after the decimal that need to be retained.
Which should amount to $67,000.00
But my problem is, when I format it into currency or numbers, I get MUCH larger numbers than i would like, looking like this:
6.700.000.000.000.000.000.000.000,00
How can I get it into the right format?
Edit: For this scenario, the user was using ACC2013 and the Field Type was Short Text. The method of conversion that succeeded was : CCur(Val(FieldNameHere))
CCur(YourFieldName)
This will convert it to a currency format.
CLng(YourFieldName)
This will convert it to a long integer format. (It will cut off the decimals)
If you're looking for a reference, Microsoft has a few examples and goes into brief detail about some of these conversion functions.
CCur(Replace("67000.00000000000000000000", ".", Format(0, ".")))
You have to replace point symbol to actual decimal separator before conversion. Because you can't know actual seprator, choosen in regional settings, you have to find it out - and such Format() operation does dirty work.

Get Text Symbol Programmatically With ID

Is there any way of programmatically getting the value of a Text Symbol at runtime?
The scenario is that I have a simple report that calls a function module. I receive an exported parameter in variable LV_MSG of type CHAR1. This indicates a certain status message created in the program, for instance F (Fail), X (Match) or E (Error). I currently use a CASE statement to switch on LV_MSG and fill another variable with a short description of the message. These descriptions are maintained as text symbols that I retrieve at compile time with text-MS# where # is the same as the possible returns of LV_MSG, for instance text-MSX has the value "Exact Match Found".
Now it seems to me that the entire CASE statement is unnecessary as I could just assign to my description variable the value of the text symbol with ID 'MS' + LV_MSG (pseudocode, would use CONCATENATE). Now my issue is how I can find a text symbol based on the String representation of its ID at runtime. Is this even possible?
If it is, my code would look cleaner and I wouldn't have to update my actual code when new messages are added in the function module, as I would simply have to add a new text symbol. But would this approach be any faster or would it in fact degrade the report's performance?
Personally, I would probably define a domain and use the fixed values of the domain to represent the values. This way, you would even get around the string concatenation. You can use the function module DD_DOMVALUE_TEXT_GET to easily access the language-dependent text of a domain value.
To access the text elements of a program, use a function module like READ_TEXT_ELEMENTS.
Be aware that generic programming like this will definitely slow down your program. Whether it would make your code look cleaner is in the eye of the beholder - if the values change rarely, I don't see why a simple CASE statement should be inferior to some generic text access.
Hope I understand you correctly but here goes. This is possible with a little trickery, all the text symbols in a report are defined as variables in the program (with the name text-abc where abc is the text ID). So you can use the following:
data: lt_all_text type standard table of textpool with default key,
lsr_text type ref to textpool.
"Load texts - you will only want to do this once
read textpool sy-repid into lt_all_text language sy-langu.
sort lt_all_Text by entry.
"Find a text, the field KEY is the text ID without TEXT-
read table lt_all_text with key entry = i_wanted_text
reference into lsr_text binary search.
If you want the address you can add:
field-symbols: <l_text> type any.
data l_name type string.
data lr_address type ref to data.
concatenate 'TEXT-' lsr_text->key into l_name.
assign (l_name) to <l_text>.
if sy-subrc = 0.
get reference of <l_text> into lr_address.
endif.
As vwegert pointed out this is probably not the best solution, for error handling rather use message classes or exception objects. This is useful in other cases though so now you know how.

How to format numeric field using dutch format in extjs?

i want to format number entered by user in dutch format. ie. use decimal Separator as , and thousand seperator as .
blur: function () {
Ext.util.Format.number(this.value, '000,000.00')
}
I want to format my numeric field on blur, the above code works fine, but
my requirement is to get a format like this- '000000.000,00'.
How to do this in extjs?
Quick and dirty, just set the thousandSeparator and decimalSeparator. It should work:
//Set these once, right after Ext.onReady
Ext.util.Format.thousandSeparator = '.';
Ext.util.Format.decimalSeparator = ',';
//Then this should work:
Ext.util.Format.number(12345.67, '0,000.00'); //output 12.345,67
Or even better, use the localization, so formats can be changed according to language requirement.
Side note:
The documentation wrote:
To allow specification of the formatting string using UK/US grouping characters (,) and decimal (.) for international numbers, add /i to the end. For example: 0.000,00/i
And from the comments in the source code
// The "/i" suffix allows caller to use a locale-specific formatting string.
// Clean the format string by removing all but numerals and the decimal separator.
// Then split the format string into pre and post decimal segments according to *what* the
// decimal separator is. If they are specifying "/i", they are using the local convention in the format string.
To me, it seems that it means a developer can use a specific format string "0.000,00" to format a given number, and not to mean a developer can use this specific format string to format a number into the format they want. They will still need to change the default separator setting.
Edit
Demo link: http://jsfiddle.net/chaoszcat/nbWwN/
I have this working for user entered values in a numberfield now.
As lionel pointed out, this is needed:
// set this once after Ext.onReady
Ext.util.Format.thousandSeparator = '.';
Ext.util.Format.decimalSeparator = ',';
Then change your handler to this:
blur: function(field) {
field.setRawValue(Ext.util.Format.number(field.getValue(), '0.000,00/i'));
}
You should also include this config on your numberfield:
decimalSeperator: ','
It will allow users to type in their own decimal symbols.
Working Example
Here is a working fiddle of this, using a numberfield.
A word of warning
Ext.form.field.Number does not support formatting, the blur handler I gave above will work totally fine if the user edits the field and then does not go back into it to edit it again, if he refocuses the field it will validate and try to correct the thousands markers into decimals.
If you are using this field to post data back to the server it will send it back in the format that is displayed (with thousand seperators), I don't know if that was what you were going for.
If you simply want formatted numbers you should do what you're trying to do above but with a textfield. That way it won't reconfigure your thousands as decimals.
If you want all the functionality of a numberfield (spinners, min/max validation, step increments, etc) you will have to take a look at extending the numberfield class, here is a user extension that already exists and which is almost exactly what you needed, but it includes a currency symbol, it would fairly easy to take that out.