User Manual

User's Guide ______________________________________________________________________
164 _________________________________________________________________ M210933EN-C
3. Next, format the data. The format of the data string is defined in the
Format field. By clicking the Default button, a default format
string for the selected data items appears. The format string for the
scan ordered example report above would be as follows:
%[////]4.1f %[///]3.0f %[//////]6.1f\r\n
Any characters between the previous item and the next % character
will be read as a field separator before the next data value. In the
example above the field separator is a space. To use a tabulator as
the field separator, replace the space with \t. The characters \r\n at
the end of an item indicates that a line-feed is inserted at the end of
each data record.
When specifying the number of characters shown for a data item,
the data field always has fixed length. Table 16 on page 164 shows
a few examples of the data value 2.345 formatted using different
format strings.
where
% = Starts each data field
[ ] = Contains the characters for invalid data, for
example, //////
4 = Indicates the number of characters
.1 = Indicates the number of decimals
f = Ends the data field (of a decimal number)
Table 16 Comparing Different Format Strings
Format String Data Item Description
%[////]4.1f " 2.3" Fixed length, padded with leading
spaces
%[////]04.1f "02.3" Fixed length, padded with leading
zeroes
%[/////]+05.1f "+02.3" Sign of value included also for positive
values
%[//].1f "2.3" Dynamic length, automatically
changed depending on data value
%[//]+.2f "+2.34" Dynamic length, sign included