HP 3000 Manuals

HP ALLBASE/4GL Developer Reference Manual Vol. 1

File Record Field Referencing 

You can reference the content of a field in a file record by using the
relevant dictionary field specification name prefixed by F-.

You must append one of the following to this field reference, to define
the file reference:

   *   file_id 

   *   file_id.record_name 

where file_id is the HP ALLBASE/4GL name for the file and record_name is
a record layout defined for the file.  The record_name term is not
required for reference to fields on HP ALLBASE/SQL tables or HP
ALLBASE/SQL select lists.

If you don't specify a record layout name in a reference to a field on a
serial data file, KSAM data file, or HP TurboIMAGE/iX data set, HP
ALLBASE/4GL uses the default record layout for the field.

The dictionary field specification name must be defined for the record
layout name you specify.  If you don't specify a record layout name, the
dictionary field specification name must be defined for the default
record layout.

You can reference a substring within a non-numeric field.

For KSAM data files, HP TurboIMAGE/iX data sets, and serial data files,
you can add the occurrence number immediately after the field
specification name if the dictionary field specification allows more than
one occurrence.  The occurrence number must be in parentheses.  If you
don't specify an occurrence number and the field specification allows
more than one occurrence, HP ALLBASE/4GL uses the first occurrence of the
field.

Formats 

     F-name.file_ref 
     F-name[start_pos,number_of_chars].file_ref 
     F-name(occurrence).file_ref 
     F-name(occurrence) [start_pos,number_of_chars].file_ref 

MPE/iX 5.0 Documentation