Re: edit mask - Floating bracket sign (instead of $)

At 10:22 AM 4/13/98 +0800, you wrote:
>My colleague wants to code a program to generate nagative values in
>brackets and not with a minus sign nor with a CR sign. Problem is that
>she wants the leading bracket to float like the $ sign.
>Eg.
>        (89.00)
>   (2,341.00)
>Coding something with the edit mask like bbb,bbb,b(0.bb does not work.
>It gives 2,3(1.00 instead of the desired (2,341.00
>Can any programming guru please tell me if the above is even possible?
>Thanks.
>KK Liu.
>(A possible solution is to play around with the user-defined edit codes
>or even the system value QCURSYM but I am not too keen on this as it
>will affect the whole system.)

What you want to do is very difficult.

The AS/400 had no easy way to deal with brackets for negative numbers.

You will have to test the number to see if it is negative, and then use an
indicator (oh no) to turn on the edit mask.  This, however will not give
you a floating opening bracket.  For a 9.2 number, the best you can easily
hope for is (9,876,543.21).

Alternatively, there are some techniques in ILE to format exactly what you
want, but again this is tedious, complicated and will likely consume lots
of machine cycles.

I suggest that you stay with a minus (-) or credit symbol (CR).

Al



Al Barsa, Jr. - Account for Midrange-L
Barsa Consulting, LLC.  
400 > 390

Phone:  914-251-9400
Fax:    914-251-9406





Private mail should be sent to barsa@ibm.net
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