SREAD C-3

NAME

sread - read contents of data field

Sread allows the user edit routine to read the contents of a data field in the current record. The field_name parameter is a pointer to the name of the field to be read. This name can be a field name or an edit name in the Field Description form. If field_name is NULL or points to an empty string, the current field is used (this is only useful in U_USEREDIT or U_CHANGED user edit calls). You can refer to a field in a previous form as formname.fieldname. Sread returns a pointer to a character string containing the contents of the data field formatted the same as the data displayed on the screen. Numbers will be right-justified with decimal places if necessary. Also, date fields read with sread will return a character string formatted in the standard date format. If the user edit routine must convert the character string returned to a numerical value, functions such as atomoney(C-3) must be used to perform the conversion.

Sread can read any field in the current or a previous form including fields that do not represent data in the current record and invisible fields. If there are two or more fields in the current form that have either the data name or the edit name specified in the sread function call, then the first field found in field order is the field that is returned.

It is possible for a data field to have two different names. One name is the field name, and this is the same name as the field in the data record. The other name is the edit field name, and this can be any arbitrary name to rename the screen field. This allows one user edit routine to be used with several formfiles and several RMSfiles. If a common set of operations must be done for each of the data files, then the screen fields in each of the formfiles can be given the same set of edit field names, regardless of what the data fields might be named. Then the user edit routine could refer only to the edit names, and thus operate in the same manner for each of the formfiles and RMSfiles.

form(C-3)

Sread returns a NULL pointer if it is unable to find the requested screen field. If the requested field is empty, then sread returns a pointer to a zero length character string. Trailing blanks are always stripped off of field values returned by sread.

The value returned by sread points to static storage that is overwritten with every call. If the value returned is to be saved, it must be copied to another variable. Specifically, the following will never work:

In this example, the sread function is called twice before the sdebug function is called, and thus the value from the first call to sread is overwritten.