RevMedia

In issue 10 volume 3 you were challenged to provide the best way of stopping a zero length field from offsetting average/total results by one. An honourable mention goes to Daniel Diggins of Peterborough Software who suggested replacing

   BREAK-ON DIVISION "L#0" TOTAL SALARY     with
   BREAK-ON {@ANS=" ":{DIVISION}} COLHEAD " " JUSTLEN "L1" TOTAL SALARY

as he says "This works by placing a space in front of the breaking value and setting the column to one character wide".

The winner was Dave Harmacek of Harmacek Database Solutions Inc who says "I use a user-defined conversion that always returns a null value, the length is one character and the heading is a single ".". Since the output conversion is not processed in the HEADING statement, the entire value of the field is displayed. Sample code

     Subroutine Conv(Type, Passed, Branch, Returned)
          If Type = "OCONV" Then Returned = "" Else
               Returned = Passed
          End
     Return

Special mention for elegant efficiency goes to David Edkins of David Edkins & Associates for "For many years I have adopted the convention of positioning any zero length fields at the END of the R/LIST output clause. In this position they will provide all of the required effects without any of the unwanted problems".