Tutorial on FORMAT function and property?

girish.joshi

Is there anywhere that I can get a really complete description of what the FORMAT function and property can do? The help file seems like a good start, but isn't really comprehensive.

In particular, my problem is I have a decimal field, and I want it formatted to a fixed length, with leading zeros, and an implied decimal point. I could code this from scratch, but it seems like a good opportunity to learn the Navision tools better.

Thanks for taking a look,

Girish Joshi

Savatage

so you're trying to make

1.29
100.50
20.39

appear like

0000129
0010050
0002039

am I correct?

girish.joshi

Yeah that's right. I would also add that I'm trying to make

1

appear as

0000100

And the real key for me would be to do it with as much of the navision standard library as possible.

Thanks Savatage

Savatage

Read these maybe they can help you....

Initalizing a string to certain characters
http://www.mibuso.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8157

leading zeros for decimals
http://www.mibuso.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7807

*of couse if you multiply your # by 100 first that rids the decimal

girish.joshi

Thanks again, Savatage.

I did know how to accomplish the task using padstr etc, but what I was really hoping for was to be able to accomplish the task with format. From the help files, I get the impression that its very powerful, but there isn't enough information there for me to really know how to use it.

ara3n

dec is of type decimal
dec := 1;

DELCHR(format(dec,0,'<Integer,5><Filler,0><Decimal,3>'),'=','.')


result is 0000100

girish.joshi

wow. exactly what I was looking for.

girish.joshi

This particular problem, decimals being converted into strings with implied decimal points and padding leading zeros, comes up frequently during integrations.

I think ara3n's approach is the best here -- uses Navision code and is concise.

Savatage's solution requires code for you to special case '0'. That is to say, multiplying by 100 to get rid of the decimals (to implement the implied point) isn't a good because if your value is 0, then 0*100=0 and it doesn't work.

The WORST, god help you if you do, solution is to code your own parsing routing.