HP Data Entry and Forms Management System (VPLUS) Reference Manual (32209-90024)
Chapter 4 165
Advanced Forms Design
STRIP
STRIP
Used to delete any specified character in the field.
Syntax
[STRIP {TRAILING
LEADING
ALL} "
characters
"]
Parameters
TRAILING If TRAILING is specified, all occurrences of each character at the end of the
field are replaced with blanks.
LEADING STRIP LEADING replaces with blanks all occurrences of each character at
the beginning of the field.
ALL STRIP ALL deletes all occurrences of each character, compressing the data
to the left.
characters
Any string of one or more characters can be specified. Since the statement
does not apply to leading or trailing blanks, the statements STRIP
LEADING or STRIP TRAILING are not useful.
Discussion
The STRIP statement can be used to format data entered into or moved to any field. (For
automatic formatting, refer to the SET command earlier in this section.) As is true of all
formatting statements, STRIP has an immediate effect on the data in the memory buffer;
the formatted data is then available for display or copying into the application. When the
user enters data into a field for which formatting is specified, the data is formatted as soon
as
ENTER or an appropriate function key is pressed. Thus, FORMSPEC formatting is done
before data is written to the data or batch file. (In contrast, reformatting through
REFORMAT, described in Section 5, is done after data is collected, edited, and written to
the batch file.)
Note that only the characters between the leftmost nonblank and the rightmost nonblank
characters are affected. That is, leading and trailing blanks are not included when the
data is formatted. No formatting occurs when the field is blank since there are no
characters to strip.
Example
Statement Data Entered After Formatting
STRIP ALL "-" [548-72-2002] [548722002∆∆]
STRIP LEADING "0" [∆000205000] [∆∆∆∆205000]