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Display Masks

Screen fields with semantic type C (count), D (date), I (identifier), or Q (quantity) and fields that have syntax P (packed) or B (binary) can have display masks applied to them. You can apply two kinds of display masks:

•

Numeric

•

Date

Numeric Display Masks

Numeric display masks can be applied to a field with a semantic type C (count), I (identifier), or Q (quantity) and syntax B (binary) or P (packed). You use a numeric display mask to print numeric fields according to common conventions, for example, 1,000 or $1,000.00. For example, a field defined as ZZZZ9V.99 converts to 10000.00.

Display Mask Entries

For numeric fields, you can make the following display mask entries:

•	Type in any string consisting of characters to be printed, for example, dollar signs ($) and commas (,).

•	Type in digit placeholders. The digit placeholders reserve display spaces for the numeric digits. The digit placeholders you define must be sufficient to hold the largest value that is processed for your field. You can define a maximum of 15 digit placeholders.

•	If negative data can appear, include the negative sign with the mask. Examples of acceptable masks are -ZZZZZ9V.99 and $ZZZZ9V.99.

•	The only digit allowed in the display mask specification is 9.

•	Only one decimal separator display character is allowed in the display mask basic string.

•	A non-numeric, non-digit character is required for a decimal separator display character (for example, 999V.9 could print as 123.4).

•	If a user inserts values greater than a display mask allows, the following results occur:

Method of Insertion	Results
Typed into the left of the decimal point.	The OVERFLOW exception is raised.
Typed into the right of the decimal portion.	The value is truncated to a point on the display, based on the decimal length.
Via a rule.	The data is presented on the display as asterisks (*).

Characteristics of Digit Placeholders

You can use the following alphanumeric characters to represent digit placeholders. Each character has a specific representation:

9	Leading zero and null appear as 0.
Z	Leading zero and null appear as blank.
N	Leading zero and null appear as null.
*	Null and 0 print as asterisks (*).
V	Decimal placeholder.

Date Display Masks

The following table shows valid date display mask components for fields with semantic type D (date) and syntax B (binary).

Format Code	Meaning	Example
W	One or two digit week # (of year), with no leading 0.	1 or 25
WW	Two digit week # (of year).	01
WWW	Abbreviated weekday.	Mon
WWWW	Full weekday.	Monday
M	Numeric month, with no leading 0 (1 or 2 digits).	3 or 10
MM	Numeric month (2 digits).	02
MMM	Abbreviated month.	Mar
MMMM	Full month.	March
D	Day in month, with no leading 0 (1 or 2 digits).	5 or 14
DD	Day in month (2 digits).	02
DDD	Day in year (3 digits).	074
YY	Last two digits in a year.	00
YYYY	Full year.	2000
QQ	Two character quarter.	2Q
JD	Julian date.	00.074
CC	Two digit century.	20

 

Note the following considerations when applying display masks: • A separator character can be any one of the following: /  \  ;  :  ,  .  *  -  blank • If no date format is specified, the installation default date format is used. • A week is defined to begin on a Monday and end on the following Sunday. However, January 1st always begins week one, regardless of where it falls in the week, and week two starts on the following Monday. • D B 4 fields can handle a minimum date of 0001/01/01 and a maximum date of 9999/12/31. • An input in YY/MM/DD of 01/01/01 results in a date from 1901. To avoid confusion, you should specify the century in your dates. • Do not make display masks longer than the field length. If the display mask is longer than the field length, the screen server takes the formatted value and displays it in left to right order, in the desired display length. Extra formatted digits are dropped. • You can specify just a portion of a date field within your mask (for example, entering only MMMM displays the month). Partial date occurrences cannot be accessed using a GET or FORALL statement, as the data cannot be interpreted as a complete date. At least the year portion of a date must be present in the mask to make it accessible to these statements.

See Also

TIBCO Object Service Broker Shareable Tools for information on the $PIC tool (the display mask specifications you can make are based on this tool) and the Date tools for information on date display masks.

Copyright © Cloud Software Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved