SheerPower® 4GL
A Guide to the SheerPower Language
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Important Note
For all dates, use 'LENGTH nn' to control whether a 6- or 8-character date is required.

  • DATE DMONY
    Checks if text_str is a legal date in DD-Mon-YY format and returns TRUE (1) or FALSE (0).

    • Example 6-136 Validation rules - DATE DMONY 

      text$  = '01-Jan-99' 
  vrule$ = 'date dmony' 
  print valid(text$, vrule$) 
  end
 
 
1

  • DATE DMONCY
    Checks if text_str is a legal date in DD-Mon-CCYY format and returns TRUE (1) or FALSE (0).

    • Example 6-137 Validation rules - DATE DMONCY 

      text$  = '01-Jan-2000' 
  vrule$ = 'date dmoncy' 
  print valid(text$, vrule$) 
  end
 
 
1

  • FULLTIME
    Checks if text_str is a legal date and time in CCYYMMDD HHMMSS or YYMMDD HHMMSS format and returns TRUE (1) or FALSE (2).

    • Example 6-138 Validation rules - FULLTIME 

      text$  = '20000122 010101' 
  text2$ = '990122 010101' 
  vrule$ = 'fulltime' 
  print valid(text$, vrule$) 
  print valid(text2$, vrule$) 
  end
 
 
1 
1

  • PATTERN
    Matches text_str with PATTERN's rule_str. For details see Section 6.5.4, PATTERN(str_expr1, str_expr2).
  • REQUIRED
    Returns TRUE if text_str is not null or space(s).

    • Example 6-139 Validation rules - REQUIRED 

      text$   = 'a b c d' 
  text2$  = ' '  
  vrule$  = 'required' 
  print valid(text$, vrule$) 
  print valid(text2$, vrule$)  
  end
 
 
1 
0

  • YES/NO
    Returns TRUE if text_str consists only of the following: YES, NO, Y or N.

    • Example 6-140 Validation rules - REQUIRED 

      text$   = 'yes' 
  text2$  = 'n' 
  text3$  = 'a'    
  vrule$  = 'yes/no' 
  print valid(text$, vrule$) 
  print valid(text2$, vrule$) 
  print valid(text3$, vrule$)    
  end
 
 
1 
1 
0

  • VRULES
    Checks if a text_str is a legal set of validation rules, and returns TRUE (1) or FALSE (0).

    • Example 6-141 Validation rules - VRULES 

      print valid('integer', 'vrules') 
  end
        
 
1

  • PRINTMASK
    PRINTMASK checks the format of text_str and returns TRUE (1) if it is legal or FALSE (0) otherwise.

    • Example 6-142 Validation rules - PRINTMASK 

      text_str$ = '##.##' 
  vrule$    = 'printmask' 
  print valid(text_str$, vrule$) 
  end
 
 
1

  • EXPRESSION
    EXPRESSION validates a text_str and returns TRUE (1) if it is a legal SheerPower expression or FALSE (0) otherwise.

    • Example 6-143 Validation rules - EXPRESSION 

      text_str$  = 'total = a% + 30' 
  text_str2$ = '##~-###' 
  vrule$     = 'expression' 
  print valid(text_str$, vrule$) 
  print valid(text_str2$, vrule$) 
  end
 
 
1 
0

  • CODE
    CODE checks for VALID SheerPower code syntax.

    • Example 6-144 Validation rules - CODE 

      a$ = "print 'hello, ' name$" 
  if  not valid(a$, 'code')  then print 'false' 
  end
  
  
false

  • MENU
    MENU validates a text_str and returns TRUE (1) if it is a legal menu description for an INPUT MENU statement, or FALSE (0) otherwise.

    • Example 6-145 Validation rules - MENU 

      text_str$ = '%multi,a,b,c' 
  vrule$    = 'menu' 
  print valid(text_str$, vrule$) 
  end
 
 
1

  • ROUTINE
    ROUTINE checks to see if the given routine name exists or not. TRUE (1) is returned if the routine name exists and FALSE (0) is returned if it does not exist.

    • Example 6-146 Validation rules - ROUTINE 

      text$  = 'do_totals' 
  text2$ = 'test_nos' 
  vrule$ = 'routine' 
  
  print valid(text$, vrule$) 
  print valid(text2$, vrule$) 
  end
 
  routine do_totals: private mytotal, desc$ 
    mytotal = 15 
    desc$ = 'Test Totals' 
    print desc$; mytotal 
  end routine
 
 
1 
0


  • FILTER
    Filters the text_str before the validation. The following filters are allowed:
    • LTRIM$ - Removes leading spaces.
    • RTRIM$ - Removes trailing spaces.
    • TRIM$ - Removes both leading and trailing spaces.
    • UCASE$ - Converts to uppercase characters.
    • LCASE$ - Converts to lowercase characters.
    • REPLACE - If text_str contains a few 'old_t1' characters, all of them will be replaced by 'new_t1'. 


              old_t1=new_t1, old_t2=new_t2, ....

    • REMOVE - Removes any characters from the text_str.
    • CHANGE - Changes specified characters. For details see the CHANGE$ function.

    • Example 6-147 Validation rules - FILTER - CHANGE 

      text$    = 'abcd10' 
  vrules$  = 'filter remove "10"; letters'  
  text2$   = 'ab1cd1' 
  vrules2$ = "filter replace '1'='e';letters" 
  text3$   = ' 1234  '  
  vrules3$ = "filter trim; number" 
  
  if  valid(text$, vrules$)  then print 'true' 
  if  valid(text2$, vrules2$)  then print 'true' 
  if  valid(text3$, vrules3$)  then print 'true' 
  end  
 
 
true 
true 
true

  • RESTORE - Restores data to pre-filtered state for further validations. Can be used for multiple validation rules.

    • Example 6-148 Validation rules - FILTER - RESTORE 

      text$  = "123" 
  vrule$ = "filter replace '1'='a';restore; number" 
  
  if  valid(text$, vrule$)  then print 'true' 
  end
 
 
true

    6.7 File and Structure Access Functions

    The following are file and structure access functions that SheerPower performs:

    6.7.1 _CHANNEL

    _CHANNEL returns the next available channel number.

    Note on the following example:
    In the following example, the text 'This is a test.' will be printed out to a new file called 'test.txt' created in your SheerPower folder. To view the results of this example, open 'test.txt' in SPDEV after running it.

    Example 6-149 _CHANNEL system function 

      out_ch = _channel
  open #out_ch: name 'sheerpower:test.txt', access output 
  print #out_ch: 'This is a test.' 
  close #out_ch 
  end

    6.7.2 _EXTRACTED

    _EXTRACTED tells how many records were extracted in the last extract.

    Example 6-150 _EXTRACTED system function 

      open structure cl: name 'sheerpower:samples\client' 
  extract structure cl 
    include cl(state) = 'CA' 
  end extract
  print 'Number of Californians:'; _extracted
  end
  
  
Number of Californians: 7

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