escaping quotes for record format criteria

[David Poiron]

I'm really struggling with escaping quotes properly. I want to perform some actions on symbols that have a certain record format field, but I cannot seem to get the criteria to work using ForEachObject.

 

Im using selCriteria:=concat('CPA Products'.'Serial'=,RF1) as the criteria where selCriteria is the selection criteria and RF1 is a string variable for the record format field contents. Because of all the record format quotes, I cannot seem to get it to work no matter how I try to escape them. Any help would be appreciated.

[Julian Carr]

Here's an example that might help:

 

Procedure T;
VAR
    s1 : STRING;
BEGIN
    s1 := Concat('(', '''My Plug-in''','.','''My Field Name''','=','''CS''', ')');
    AlrtDialog(s1);
END;
Run(T);

[Pat Stanford]

Or my favorite, CHR(39) 😉

 

CHR(39) puts in ascii character which is the single quote.  So my version would look something like:

 

selCriteria:=Concat(CHR(39),'CPA Products',CHR(39)'.',CHR(39),'Serial',CHR(39),'=',RF1);

 

I just use CHR(39) where quotes are actually needed in the final string.

 

To debug, I use AlrtDialog(selCriteria); to see what is actually being produced.

 

double and triple single quotes are great after you get them working correctly, but they are such a pain to try and read and differentiate. CHR(39) is typing a little more, but you then know exactly what you are doing at a glance.

[Julian Carr]

I recall years ago someone wrote a script that would create these strings. Can't find it though.

[Sam Jones]

Per Pat's suggestion of using chr(39), you can make a "const" declaration of "k39"= chr(39)" which makes is example a tiny bit easier to implement;

 

CONST

    k39 = chr(39)

 

VAR

    asdfasdf

 

BEGIN

    selCriteria:=Concat(k39, 'CPA Products', k39, '.', k39, 'Serial', k39, '=', RF1);

END;

 

Suggestion: spaces after commas have no effect but make the function parameters easier to read.  Pat is missing a comma after the second CHR(39).  That happens to me all the time setting up criteria strings.

[Pat Stanford]

Thanks for the extra hint Sam. You could even set the Const to be something like a capital Q so it is not even any extra characters to type.

 

Julian, now that you mention it, that sounds vaguely familiar to me also. A quick search didn't turn up anything in my archives either though. I will keep looking. I want to say that perhaps is was not done in VS, but rather though BBEdit or something else?

[David Poiron]

This ended up working with a CONST Q=CHR(39);

 

selCriteria := CONCAT(Q,'CPA Products',Q,'.',Q,'Serial',Q,'=',Q,RF1,Q);

 

Thanks as always!

Edited August 16, 2021 by David Poiron