Skip to content

Show

See Also: Showln, Write, Writeln, Fundamental Data Types, Expression Syntax

Purpose

To display a string of characters to the screen in a special "character-mode" display box that deactivates when its Close button is pressed. This command is intended for development purposes only; it should not be used in finished applications.

Syntax

show
value [... value]

Argument Explanation

value may be of any primitive data type or an expression.

What It Does

Show outputs the value(s) to a special-purpose object displayed at the top left of the screen when the first show or showln command is executed. If the data exceeds the width of the object, the display will wrap onto the object's next physical line. The object remains displayed and shows successive show and showln commands until its Close button is pressed.

This command is intended for development purposes only; it should not be used in finished applications.

To show literal information, place it inside single or double quotation marks. To show the contents of a variable, name the variable without quotation marks.

show "Report in Progress"

In this example, the message "Report in Progress" is displayed.

string sStockNumber
move "128 0045" to sStockNumber
show sStockNumber

In this example, the value of sStockNumber (128 0045) is displayed.

Different data types can be intermingled on a single show command line.

show "The date in one week will be " (dToday + 7)

In this example, the legend "The date in one week will be" is displayed to the screen, followed by the date seven days after the value of dToday.

Notes

  • Show outputs only to the screen. For output to the printer or a file, use the write and writeln commands.

  • If you want the cursor to move to the beginning of the next line after displaying data on the screen, use the showln command.

  • The show and showln commands display only seven significant digits of values, along with the sign and, for Real values of absolute value greater than 9,999,999 or less than 0.0001, the exponent. Show and showln display numbers of absolute value up to 99,999,999,999,999, and truncate on the left without reporting an error above that point. To the right of the decimal point, show and showln truncate displays of numbers to the right of the seventh digit after the decimal point, and for Reals, they round the seventh digit.