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SET
Used to move data either by setting the current field to a value or by
moving data between fields. Also performs automatic formatting.
Syntax
{destination TO source}
SET{destination }
{TO source }
Parameters
source Can be a field name, save field name, constant,
arithmetic expression, or an index retrieve operand
within parenthesis. Refer to "Statement Syntax" earlier
in this section for details.
destination Can be a field name or save field name.
Discussion
When data is moved between constants, fields, and save fields, certain
restrictions apply and certain conversions may take place. These depend
entirely upon the data types of the source and destination. In general,
any field, save field, or constant can be converted to a character type
field, but numeric and date fields accept only data of a similar type.
DIG fields accept only positive sources. If a source is $EMPTY, the
destination is set to all blanks. Table 4-10 shows the conversion that
is performed when data is moved between fields.
Assigning a Value to the Current Field
To set the current field to the value of another field, a save field, a
constant, an arithmetic expression, or a value in a list located through
an index, use the following SET statement:
Syntax
SET [fieldname] TO source
Parameters
fieldname The current field name (default).
source Can be a field name, save field name, constant,
arithmetic expression, or an index retrieve operand
within parenthesis. Refer to "Statement Syntax" earlier
in this section for details.
Discussion
In general, any source value can be moved to a character type field.
Numeric and date fields accept only data of similar type. If the field
type is DIG, the source must be a positive value (see Table 4-8).
By default, all fields are initialized to blanks in the initialization
phase (refer to "Phases" at end of this section for more information on
phases.) You can specify a particular initial value for any field by
including an initial value in the Field Menu field attributes. More
elaborate initialization can be done with this subset of the SET
statement.
When you assign an initial value to a field in the Field Menu, you can
specify only a constant. The constant is entered exactly like user input
at a terminal. (Remember that input in FORMSPEC is NATIVE-3000; if a
native language is specified, data is converted at run-time. Refer to
Section 8.) When you assign a value through the SET statement, you have
more flexibility. The values assigned are dynamic in that they may
depend on values in other fields or in save fields, or they may be
derived from an arithmetic expression, or through an indexed retrieval.
If you do assign a constant through the SET statement, it must follow the
rules for constants described earlier in this section. That is, a
character string must be surrounded by quotes, a date string by
exclamation points. Also, a date constant must be in the order MDY
regardless of its destination format.
If a source field is of date type (MDY, YMD, DMY), the current field must
be defined to be 8 bytes long to allow for internal delimiters. Some
examples using the SET TO source statement follow.
Example
1. Assume a date field of the form MDY.
SET TO $TODAY \Sets the field to today's date in the
\format dd/dd/dd in the order of
\the field's date type.
SET TO !FEB 10,1986! \Sets the field to the specified date.
SET TO DAT1 \Sets the field to whatever value
\is in the field DAT1 at run-time.
2. Assume the current field is type DIG. The following statement sets
this field to a digit selected from a list of digits by the index
value, COUNT:
SET TO COUNT OF 7,9,16,24,31,72,15,12
If COUNT=5, the value assigned to the field is 31, if COUNT=3, the
value 16 is assigned, and so forth.
3. Values may be passed from one form to another through save fields.
Assume that when FORMA is executed, the save field SF3 is set to
the value of F1. Further assume you are designing FORMB and want
to set the current field to the value of the field F1 in FORMA.
SET TO SF3 \Value passed from a field in a different
\form through the save field SF3.
Moving Data Between Fields
To move data to a field or a save field from another field or save field,
or to move a constant, an arithmetic expression, or a value retrieved
from a list to a particular field, use the following versions of the SET
statement:
Syntax
{destination }
SET{destination "TO" source}
Parameters
source Can be a field name, save field name, constant,
arithmetic expression, or an index retrieve operand
within parenthesis. Refer to "Statement Syntax" earlier
in this section for details.
destination Can be a field name or save field name.
Discussion
When a source is not included, whatever value is in the current field is
moved to the specified destination. (The current field is the field in
which the SET statement appears.)
Example
1. Move the value resulting from an arithmetic expression to a
numeric data field AMOUNT:
SET AMOUNT TO 6 %(3*COST)
This statement multiplies the value of the field COST by 3 and
then sets AMOUNT to 6 percent of the result.
2. Set the save field SF3 to the current value of the field in which
the SET statement appears:
SET SF3
Assume the current field is a character type with the value SMITH.
The SET statement moves the value SMITH to the save field SF3. SF3
must be a character type save field.
Automatic Formatting
In general, automatic formatting performed during data movement is
governed by the data type of the destination. The following discussion
illustrates data movement for various data types. Refer to Table 4-10
for a summary of the conversion performed during data movement.
Character Type
If the destination is a character field, data moved to it does not change
its relative position. If the source is too large for the destination,
the data is truncated on the right when it is moved. If the source has
fewer characters, the destination is padded with blanks on the right.
Table 4-7. Automatic Formatting for Character Data
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| | |
| Source | Destination |
| | |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| | |
| "ARMSTRONG" (9 characters) | "ARMSTRONG " (10 characters) |
| | |
| |
| | |
| " ARMSTRONG" (11 characters) | " ARMSTRONG" (10 characters) |
| | |
| |
| | |
| "ARMSTRONG " (14 characters) | "ARMSTRONG" (9 characters) |
| | |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Numeric Type
When data is moved between numeric fields, the following formatting is
performed:
Sign Any plus sign is stripped from the source before the
number is moved to its destination. If the source is
negative, a minus sign is inserted to the left of the
first digit in the destination.
Decimal Point If the source has an implied or actual decimal point
(IMPn or NUM[n] data type), the fractional part is
rounded and/or truncated or zero filled to conform to
the number of decimal places specified for the
destination.
If the destination has no decimal position (NUMO, IMPO,
or DIG), any fractional part is rounded and/or
truncated. If the destination is NUM (floating decimal
point), the number is right justified after being
stripped of trailing zeros following the decimal point.
If the source specifies no decimal places (type is NUMO,
IMPO, or DIG) and if the destination has an implied or
actual decimal point, the fractional part is zero
filled.
Note that if the length of the destination is too small,
any decimal places are rounded and truncated until the
source fits.
Commas All commas in the source are removed.
Leading Zeros Leading zeros are stripped in all cases.
The result is then placed, right justified, as shown in Table 4-8, in the
destination field.
With Native Language Support, decimal and thousands indicators are
language-dependent in the NUM[n] and IMP[n] fields. When data is moved
between fields and automatic formatting occurs for data entered in any
field, recognition, removal or insertion of these decimal and thousands
indicators also depends upon the local custom for the native language
specified for the forms file. The optional decimal symbols in constants
will be local custom-dependent. For more information on Native Language
Support, see Section 8.
Table 4-8. Automatic Formatting for Numeric Data
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| | |
| Source | Destination |
| | |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| | |
| 123 (DIG) | 123 (DIGIT,length is 5) |
| | |
| |
| | |
| 123 (IMP2) | 1.23 (NUM2,length is 4) |
| | |
| |
| | |
| 12.3 (NUM1) | 12.3 (NUM,length is 6) |
| | |
| |
| | |
| 12.3 (NUM1) | 12.30 (NUM2)length is 5) |
| | |
| |
| | |
| 12.3 (NUM1) | 12. (NUM2,length is 3) |
| | |
| |
| | |
| 12.3 (NUM1) | 1230 (IMP2,length is 4) |
| | |
| |
| | |
| 12.3 (NUM1) | 123 (IMP1,length is 3) |
| | |
| |
| | |
| +3357 (NUM) | 335700 (IMP2,length is 6) |
| | |
| |
| | |
| -3357 (IMP3) | -3.4 (NUM1,length is 4) |
| | |
| |
| | |
| 001,000 (NUM) | 1000.00 (NUM2,length is 7) |
| | |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date Type
Any date, regardless of the format of the source, is moved to the
destination as dd/dd/dd, as shown in Table 4-9. Thus, if a date is going
to be placed into a field using a SET command, the field must be at least
eight characters long. The order depends on whether the destination is
specified as MDY, DMY, or YMD. With Native Language Support, conversion
from alphabetic months to the numeric destination month is language
dependent. For more information on Native Language Support, see Section
8.
Table 4-9. Automatic Formatting for Dates
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| | |
| Source | Destination |
| | |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| | |
| FEB 5, 1986 | 02/05/86 (defined as MDY) |
| | |
| |
| | |
| 2/5/86 | 86/02/05 (defined as YMD) |
| | |
| |
| | |
| 2,5,86 | 02/05/86 (defined as MDY) |
| | |
| |
| | |
| February 5, 1986 | 05/02/86 (defined as DMY) |
| | |
| |
| | |
| September 16, 1986 | 09/16/86 (defined as MDY) |
| | |
| |
| | |
| Oct. 23. 1986 | 86/10/23 (defined as YMD) |
| | |
| |
| | |
| October 23, 1986 | 23/10/86 (defined as DMY) |
| | |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table 4-10. Conversion During Data Movement
![[]](../../pic3k/M000076/TA04103c50.gif)
Default Formatting
Besides the explicit formatting described below, data is formatted
whenever it is moved between fields according to the rules for automatic
formatting. If you want data entered by the user to be formatted
automatically, you can specify the following version of the SET
statement.
SET TO thisfield
Parameters
thisfield is the name of the field in which SET appears.
Essentially, you set the field to itself.
For example, you may want to ensure that a monetary value is always right
justified with a decimal point inserted preceding two decimal positions.
To do this, define the field as type NUM2 and then use the SET statement
to force data entered in this field to be formatted. The Field Menu in
Figure 4-3 illustrates this use of SET.
![[]](../../pic3k/M000076/F04033c50.gif)
Figure 4-3. Field Menu with a SET Statement
Example
1. Suppose the user enters a price in the field as follows:
[123.5 ]
The SET statement causes it to be formatted as:
[ 123.50]
2. In another situation, this version of SET TO can be used to format
a date. Suppose the date field, DATE1, is type MDY and the user
enters a date in the form:
[FEB 12, 86]
A SET statement of the form SET TO DATE1 in the Field Menu
describing DATE1 formats the user entered data as:
[02/12/86 ]