Guardian Programmer's Guide

Formatting and Manipulating Character Data
Guardian Programmer’s Guide — 421922-014
19 - 25
List-Directed Formatting
!------------------------------------------------------------
! Main procedure performs initialization.
!------------------------------------------------------------
PROC CALENDAR MAIN;
BEGIN
STRING .TERM^NAME[0:MAXFLEN - 1];
INT TERMLEN;
! Read the Startup message:
CALL INITIALIZER;
! Open the home terminal:
ERROR := PROCESS_GETINFO_(!process^handle!,
!file^name:maxlen!,
!file^name^len!,
!priority!,
!moms^processhandle!,
TERM^NAME:MAXFLEN,
TERMLEN);
IF ERROR <> 0 THEN CALL PROCESS_STOP_;
ERROR := FILE_OPEN_(TERM^NAME:TERMLEN,TERM^NUM);
IF ERROR <> 0 THEN CALL PROCESS_STOP_;
! Call the DISPLAY^MONTH procedure:
CALL DISPLAY^MONTH;
END;
List-Directed Formatting
List-directed formatting provides the data-conversion capabilities of the formatter
without needing a specified format. The FORMATDATA[X] procedure determines the
details of the data conversion based on the data types specified in the data descriptors.
List-directed formatting can be applied to input or output as follows:
• Applied to input, the rules for list-directed formatting permit free-format input of
data values rather than require fixed fields as you would need for format-directed
formatting. The FORMATDATA[X] procedure converts the input data according to
the data types specified in the data descriptor list and stores the converted values
as indicated by the data descriptor.
• Applied to output, list-directed formatting has fewer advantages because without a
specified format, the output is not necessarily in a conveniently readable form.