NET/MASTER Network Control Language (NCL) Programmer's Guide

Defining Field Characters in a Panel Description File

Working With Panels

106160 Tandem Computers Incorporated 14–49

Preparsing Syntax

The general syntax of a preparse specification is:

#OPT PREPARSE=(

character

, { D | S } )

character

specifies a single alternative substitution character to be used during the preparse

phase. It cannot be an ampersand.

The alternative substitution character is used as the substitution character for the

preparse phase. Panel Services scans each line in the panel for occurrences of the

preparse character and these variables are isolated. The variables are then

resolved using the values of the corresponding variables set from the NCL process

that displays the panel.

Using an alternative substitution character allows Panel Services to ignore panel

lines with variables starting with an ampersand until the preparse phase has

completed.

specifies dynamic preparsing.

specifies static preparsing.

Considerations When Using Preparsing

Preparsing substitutes for the character specified by using the #OPT PREPARSE panel

control statement. Once preparsing is complete, standard panel field processing

proceeds normally.

Take care that the data substituted does not contain unwanted field characters that

introduce unexpected fields if not removed: for example, if preparsing is generating

an entire line of data that is expected to be output only.

If this data contains any underscore characters for an input field, errors may occur

because the field format is incorrect. You can overcome this by ensuring the data

substituted by preparsing does not contain such unwanted field characters.

Note You can also set field characters in your substituted data to dynamically change the output attributes of a

field.