I just caused a foulup in D3 using the LOCATE( function.
I'm used to UniData & I thought that if ...

POS=0
LOCATE(X,Y,1;POS)

would leave POS as zero if the locate of X in Y<1> failed.
But no D3 & Universe set the POS to the next available mv position.
Have I lost it?
I dont have a Unidata machine to confirm my shaky recollections.

Jeremy Thomson

On D3, POS is set the where the item is, or where it should be if it's not
there.

Locate with 'AR', 'AL' etc will position POS where the item would be
inserted if it doesn't exist. Without the sorting options, POS would be set
to 1+item count.

Use the THEN/ELSE to determine if it passed or failed.


<panzerboy (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote

Hi
I am not sure if it is documented (note to self must check) but ARS was
added to D3 some years ago which gets around the problem of negatives being
sorted in with the positives based on unsigned status.
By the way I'm sorry mate it is 10 years since I used Unidata but none of my
programs fell over and I have always seen POS as returning the calculated
position even if it was not there. Personally I use the ELSE clause plus
POS to shove it in. I must admit I stick to the original Reality format.
Peter McMurray

"Mark Brown" <mbrown (AT) drexelmgt (DOT) com> wrote

I have always found having the POS variable filled with the expected
position very useful. This allows you to use the ELSE clause and then
use the INSERT statement to insert the substring into the searched
string.

Cliff

Jeremy:

According to the UniData manual:

SETTING location
Returns the location of the string. If the search is not successful,
execution depends on the presence of the BY clause:

If the BY clause is included, the array is assumed to be sorted, and a
location is returned indicating where the element should be inserted to
maintain the array in sorted order.

If the BY clause is not included, the array is assumed to be unsorted,
and the location returned is of the last element plus one.



Hope this helps.

Bill

<panzerboy (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote