Glossary of Terms

Alt Keyboard Sequence

A key pressed while holding down the ALT key that causes a Click Event for that object. To create an Alt Keyboard Sequence, include an ampersand (&) immediately preceding the character you want to designate as an access key. The character is underlined when the text is displayed. The '&' behavior is a Windows only behavior. Any single '&' characters found in the text string is removed. However, the runtime detects '&&' to force a '&' character to be displayed.

Form Pointed Character

The first character of the Logical String as indicated by the value of the Form Pointer (FP).

Form Pointer

An attribute of a character variable indicating the beginning of the Logical String.

Logical Length

The length of the Logical String that may be determined by subtracting the Form Pointer (FP) from the Length Pointer (LP) and adding one (1).

Length Pointed Character

The last character of the Logical String as indicated by the value of the Length Pointer (LP).

Length Pointer

An attribute of a character variable indicating the end of the Logical String.

Logical String

A string of characters within a character variable beginning with the Form Pointed character and continuing through the Length Pointed character.

Null String

A character variable with a Form Pointer (FP) value of zero (0) or a null literal ("").

Operation

The instruction, whether a PL/B instruction or the data definition type.

Physical String

The contents of a character variable starting with position one (1) and ending at the declared physical size inclusive.

Physical Length

The current maximum length of a character variable.

Separator

A comma or one of the following prepositions: BY, TO, OF, FROM, USING, WITH, IN, or INTO.