| Navigation: Language Reference > 13 - Built-in Functions >====== DISPLAY (write USE variables to screen) ====== |    |
DISPLAY( [first control] [,last control] )
| DISPLAY | Writes the contents of USE variables to their associated controls. |
| first control | Field number or field equate label of a control, or the first control in a range of controls. |
| last control | Field number or field equate label of the last control in a range of controls. |
DISPLAY writes the contents of the USE variables to their associated controls on the active window. DISPLAY with no parameters writes the USE variables for all controls on the screen. Using first control alone, as the parameter of DISPLAY, writes a specific USE variable to the screen. Both first control and last control parameters are used to display the USE variables for an inclusive range of controls on the screen.
The current contents of the USE variables of all controls are automatically displayed on screen each time the ACCEPT loop cycles if the window has the AUTO attribute present. This eliminates the need to explicitly issue a DISPLAY statement to update the video display. Of course, if your application performs some operation that takes a long time and you want to indicate to the user that something is happening without cycling back to the top of the ACCEPT loop, you should DISPLAY some variable that you have updated.
Example:
DISPLAY !Display all controls on the screen
DISPLAY(2) !Display control number 2
DISPLAY(3,7) !Display controls 3 through 7
DISPLAY(?MenuControl) !Display the menu control
DISPLAY(?TextBlock,?Ok) !Display range of controls
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