Edit with Parentheses in Query/400, Take Two

September 6, 2002 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Hey, Ted:

I read your response to the question posted in the August 28 issue of Midrange Guru, and since I don’t work much with negative numbers, I changed data to try your solution. I think I found something, but I don’t know why or how it works..

I changed the Describe Numeric Field Editing display, as follows: I changed the Replace leading zeroes field with a Y and changed the Replace with field with a 3 (Floating currency symbol). Here’s an example:

Describe Numeric Field Editing                      
                                                                             
 Field . . . . . . :   JEAMT                                                 
                                                                             
 Type choices, press Enter.                                                  
                                                                             
 Decimal point . . . . . . . .   1      1=.  2=,  3=:  4=$      5=None
 Thousands separator . . . . .   2      1=.  2=,  3='  4=Blank  5=None
 Show negative sign  . . . . .   Y      Y=Yes, N=No
   Left negative sign  . . . .   (
   Right negative sign . . . .   )
 Show currency symbol  . . . .   N      Y=Yes, N=No
   Left currency symbol  . . .   $
   Right currency symbol . . .
 Print zero value  . . . . . .   Y      Y=Yes, N=No
 Replace leading zeros . . . .   Y      Y=Yes, N=No
   Replace with  . . . . . . .   3      1=Blanks
                                        2=Asterisks
                                        3=Floating currency symbol
   Single leading zero . . . .   N      Y=Yes, N=No
                                                                             
 F3=Exit       F5=Report         F10=Process/previous    F12=Cancel    
 F13=Layout    F16=Remove edit   F18=Files

I expected to see something like (   $1), but I saw (1) for a field that had a negative number. I hope this helps. See if you can test it and break it.

— Doug

It works, Doug. I had no idea it would do this. The reason it didn’t print (   $1) was because Show currency symbol is N. If you change it to Y, the currency symbol prints and the left parenthesis still floats.

Thanks for sharing your discovery with us.

— Ted

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