Defining display formats – PB Docs 2018

Display formats are represented through masks, where certain
characters have special significance. PowerBuilder supports four kinds
of display formats, each using different mask characters:

For example, in a string format mask, each @ represents a
character in the string and all other characters represent themselves.
You can use the following mask to display phone numbers:

Combining formats

You can include different types of display format masks in a
single format. Use a space to separate the masks. For example, the
following format section includes a date and time format:

Using sections

Each type of display format can have multiple sections, with each
section corresponding to a form of the number, string, date, or time.
Only one section is required; additional sections are optional and
should be separated with semicolons (;).You cannot use sections in edit
masks. Semicolons can be used only in display formats.

The following format specifies different displays for positive and
negative numbers—negative numbers are displayed in parentheses:

Using keywords

Enclose display format keywords in square brackets. For example,
you can use the keyword [General] when you want PowerBuilder to
determine the appropriate format for a number.

Using colors

You can define a color for each display format section by
specifying a color keyword before the format. The color keyword is the
name of the color, or a number that represents the color, enclosed in
square brackets: [RED] or [255]. The number is usually used only when a
color is required that is not provided by name. The named color keywords
are:

The formula for combining primary color values into a number
is:

where the amount of each primary color is specified as a value
from 0 to 255. For example, to specify cyan, substitute 255 for blue,
255 for green, and 0 for red. The result is 16776960.

If you want to add text to a numeric display format and use a
color attribute, you must include the escape character () before each
literal in the mask. For example:

The following table lists the blue, green, and red values you can
use in the formula to create other colors.

Using special characters

To include a character in a mask that has special meaning in a
display format, such as [, precede the character with a backslash ().
For example, to display a single quotation mark, enter ”.

Setting display formats at
runtime

In scripts, you can use GetFormat to get the current format for a
column and SetFormat to change the format for a column at
runtime.