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Text File | 1986-02-21 | 12.3 KB | 369 lines

DEFINED LENGTH VS. LOCATED LENGTH IN VARIABLE FORMS DATE : 02/05/86 NUMBER : EX-2-4 PRODUCT : R5K VERSIONS : 1.01 CATEGORY : Varforms SUBCATEGORY : Locations of Text Cols ****************************************************************************** DESCRIPTION: I located a variable that I defined as TEXT 4 on my variable form. I only need one character as input so I located the E on top of the S in locate mode. I have other text immediately following the location. When I enter or edit that variable the text that is just to the right of the location is "grabbed" by the variable. EXPLANATION: There are two types of lengths for TEXT type variables in variable forms, the defined length and the located length. The located length is the determined by counting the S, the E, and all the spaces between the S and E. The defined length is the actual length that you gave the TEXT variable when you defined it. The located length can be shorter than the defined length or it can be the same size. If the located length is shorter, R:base "pulls" the difference from whatever happens to be on the form immediately following the E of the location. This can be useful when you want to concatenate a default value onto the end of whatever the operator enters. For example, you could automatically concatenate a state abreviation to the end of each city entered by the operator. If the you knew the state would always be MI for Michigan, you could avoid having the operator enter it each time by locating the CITY variable in 4 less positions than its definition would warrant. To make this work, define CITY with a length of 20 and locate it in 16 positions. Then in the Edit mode of the FORMS command, enter the space, comma, and MI immediately following the E of the CITY location. The result will be similar to the following: S E ,MI Now everything the operator enters into CITY will have the ,MI automatically concatenated onto the end of it. SOLUTION: If you do not want R:base to grab text, make sure that the defined length of TEXT columns and the located length are the same or that only spaces follow the location. To correct your current variable form, use the R:base FORMS command. When prompted for the name of the form, enter the variable form name. Choose the locate option and name your variable. Change the defined length of the variable to exactly match the located length that you want. Finally, locate your Ss and Es to match the definition. ****************************************************************************** HOW TO PRINT A PAGE FOOTER AT THE BOTTOM OF A PAGE DATE : 02/05/86 NUMBER : EX-2-5 PRODUCT : R5K VERSIONS : 1.01 CATEGORY : Reports SUBCATEGORY : Placement of footer ************************************************************************************ DESCRIPTION: If there are less than thirty lines of detail printed on a page, the page footer prints under the detail and not on the bottom of the page. How can I put the page footer at the foot of the page? EXPLANATION: This is the way the report writer normally prints page footers. However, there are several ways to work around this and actually print the page footer at the the bottom of the page. The solution presented here is one way. SOLUTION: See the article in the R:base EXCHANGE November 1985 "Printing on Preprinted Forms" for a detailed explanation of this solution. This solution is outlined below: 1) First determine how many lines you would normally print on the page before the footer To do this, calculate the total number of lines on the page: 66 Minus footer lines (10 in this example): 10 -- Leaving the number of lines to print before the footer: 56 2) Set lines (on reports main menu) to the answer from step 1 (56 in this example) 3) Define three report variables using the define mode of the REPORTS command. One for the printer control code for page size 56. One for the printer control code for eject. One for printer control code for page size 10. You will need to refer to your printer manual to locate the decimal codes you will need for this third step. 4) Locate the three report variables using the locate mode of the REPORTS command. Locate the variable for page size 56 at top of page header. Locate the variable for eject as 1st var in page footer. Locate the variable for page size 10 immediately following the eject variable in the footer. The footer will now be printed at the bottom of the page, and #page will count page numbers correctly. ************************************************************************************ AUTOEXEC.BAT AND DATE AND TIME DATE : 02/05/86 NUMBER : EX-2-6 PRODUCT : R5K VERSIONS : 1.01 CATEGORY : DOS SUBCATEGORY : AUTOEXEC.BAT ************************************************************************************ DESCRIPTION: I put my CD and PATH commands in an AUTOEXEC.BAT file as I was told to do in the first chapter of the manual, and now my machine doesn't prompt me for the correct date and time. How can I get it to prompt me again? EXPLANATION: Some computer systems that automatically prompt for date & time when booted, stop prompting when there is an AUTOEXEC.BAT file. DOS assumes that If you want to be prompted for DATE and TIME, you will put the appropriate commands in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file. SOLUTION: Modify your AUTOEXEC.BAT file to include the DATE and TIME commands. Then every time you boot your system you will be prompted to enter DATE and TIME. For example, your AUTOEXEC.BAT file might contain the following lines: PATH C:\DBDIR;C:\SYSTEM CD C:\DBDIR\DATA DATE TIME ************************************************************************************ SUPPRESSING ERROR MESSAGES WHEN DELETING A FILE DATE : 02/05/86 NUMBER : EX-2-8 PRODUCT : R5K VERSIONS : 1.01 CATEGORY : MESSAGES SUBCATEGORY : SUPPRESSION ************************************************************************************ DESCRIPTION: When I set messages and error messages off, then delete a file, I still get the message that the file is being deleted. EXPLANATION: Some commands print messages on the screen even though ERROR MESSAGES and MESSAGES have been set off. The commands that currently do this include DELETE, COPY, RENAME, CHANGE COLUMN, and EXPAND. SOLUTION: In your command file, you can work around this problem by sending the message into a file. This way the user will never see the message. For example, you could delete a file by using the following set of three commands before deleting the file: OUTPUT TRASHCAN DELETE filename OUTPUT SCREEN This will delete the file, but send the message to an output file named TRASHCAN rather than to the screen. ************************************************************************************ WHEN DOLLAR SIGN IS SET TO BLANK, DOLLAR MATH IS INCORRECT DATE : 02/05/86 NUMBER : EX-2-9 PRODUCT : R5K VERSIONS : 1.01 CATEGORY : MATH SUBCATEGORY : DOLLAR ****************************************************************************** DESCRIPTION: When doing dollar arithmetic, I get unexpected results or I get the following error message : -ERROR- Expression cannot be evaluated This only occurs when doing dollar arithmetic using global variables. EXPLANATION: R:base does not handle dollar arithmetic correctly when the dollar sign is set to a blank. R:base does not look at the data type, it looks only at the value. Because there is no dollar sign on the number, dollar math is no longer possible. R:base gets confused because both the BLANK and DOLLAR are set to a blank. If you set DOLLAR to something that nothing else is set to (such as the pound sign #), then dollar math will work correctly. Any dollar value that contains a comma will not work at all. In addition, the following three examples also demonstrate what is happening: EXAMPLE ONE: This example shows normal dollar arithmetic. Here everything comes out the way you would expect because DOLLAR is set to the dollar sign: SET DOLLAR=$ SHOW VARIABLE Variable = Value Type -------- ------------------------------ ---- #DATE = 01/30/86 DATE #TIME = 8:43:21 TIME V1 = $100.00 DOLLAR V2 = $25.00 DOLLAR SET VARIABLE V3 TO .V1 + .V2 SHOW VARIABLE Variable = Value Type -------- ------------------------------ ---- #DATE = 01/30/86 DATE #TIME = 8:44:20 TIME V1 = $100.00 DOLLAR V2 = $25.00 DOLLAR V3 = $125.00 DOLLAR EXAMPLE TWO: This example shows the same calculation as example one but here DOLLAR is first set to a blank. Here the variable V3 is computed without an error message but it is given a REAL data type instead of DOLLAR. CLEAR V3 SET DOLLAR= SET VARIABLE V3 = .V1 + .V2 SHOW VARIABLE Variable = Value Type -------- ------------------------------ ---- #DATE = 01/30/86 DATE #TIME = 8:45:31 TIME V1 = 100.00 DOLLAR V2 = 25.00 DOLLAR V3 = 125.00 REAL EXAMPLE THREE: This example demonstrates that if you first set DOLLAR to a blank and you preassign a DOLLAR data type to the V3 variable, then you get the error message and R:base will not perform the calculation. CLEAR V3 SET DOLLAR= SET VARIABLE V3 DOLLAR SET VARIABLE V3 TO .V1 + .V2 -ERROR- Expression cannot be evaluated SHOW VARIABLE Variable = Value Type -------- ----------------------------- ----- #DATE = 01/30/86 DATE #TIME = 11:37:19 TIME V1 = 100.00 DOLLAR V2 = 25.00 DOLLAR V3 = -0- DOLLAR If you set DOLLAR back to the dollar sign, then the problems demonstrated by the second and third examples do not occur. Instead, you get accurate results like that in the first example. SOLUTION: Set the dollar sign back to $ with the command: SET DOLLAR=$ before doing calculations, and set it to blank afterwards if necessary. ************************************************************************************ MODIFYING LABELS.MAC DATE : 02/05/86 NUMBER : EX-2-10 PRODUCT : R5K VERSIONS : 1.01 CATEGORY : LABELS SUBCATEGORY : LABELS.MAC ************************************************************************************ DESCRIPTION: I modified LABELS.MAC to include my column names, and I am running it from within my own command file as a macro (with a RUN LABELS.MAC command line), but it keeps dumping me to the R> when it is finished processing. It should be returning to the next line in my calling command file. EXPLANATION: LABELS.MAC has the following command as the final command line in the file: INPUT TERMINAL This terminates processing. The QUIT command and the INPUT SCREEN commands will also terminate the processing of the calling command file. SOLUTION: Change the last line of LABELS.MAC to say RETURN. Control will then return to your command file instead of the R> prompt.