Fill Field

Use this command to put a single character multiple times into a single field or multiple array elements of the same field.

FILL fn/v

Required - The field to be filled. May not be a pointer (P or F), but any other type is legal. You can use the redirector and a pointer to point to a legal field.

where

TRAIL / LEAD / ALL - If the field being filled is of A type you may set whether to fill the trailing (TRAIL) or leading (LEAD) characters, or all (ALL). The program will put the character_to_use in each receiving position starting with the last (and then decrementing) or the first (and then incrementing) until the program finds the first character with an ASCII value greater than a space (ASCII 32). In the case of ALL the program will replace all characters in the field.

NOTE: All displayable characters are greater than a space. The default value is TRAIL.

CHR f/c/e

The fill character. This really isn't optional, however, if this value is not set by you the default is binary 0. You may use any type of field or expression, but the program will only use the first character (byte) of the resultant field/value.

TIMES f/c/e

If the field being filled is an array you may stipulate how many elements to fill using this option. You may also specify the beginning array element number, if other than 1, in the fieldname in the normal fashion, for example:

FILL ThisField[5] TRAIL CHR '#' TIMES 2

The command above would fill ThisField, array element 5 and 6 with the character '#'.

COMMENTS

If the field being filled is not an A type, the program will fill the entire field with character_to_use.

If you want to use a binary fill character it can be passed as an I or B type field or through the CHR() function.