Statement continuation
Description
Although you typically put one statement on each line, you
occasionally need to continue a statement to more than one line.
The statement continuation character is the ampersand (&). (For the use of the ampersand
character in accelerator keys, see the PowerBuilder Users
Guide.)
Syntax
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<span>Start of statement &</span>  <br> <span>more statement &</span>  <br> <span>end of statement</span> |
The ampersand must be the last nonwhite character on the line
or the compiler considers it part of the statement.
For information about white space, see “White space “.
Usage
You do not use a continuation character for:
-
Continuing comments
Do not use a continuation character to
continue a comment. The continuation character is considered part
of the comment and is ignored by the compiler. -
Continuing SQL statements
You do not need a continuation character to
continue a SQL statement. In
PowerBuilder, SQL statements
always end with a semicolon (;), and the compiler considers everything
from the start of a SQL statement
to a semicolon to be part of the SQL statement.
A continuation character in a SQL statement
is considered part of the statement and usually causes an error.
Examples
Continuing a quoted string
One way Place an ampersand in
the middle of the string and continue the string on the next line:
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IF Employee_District = "Eastern United States and& |
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Eastern Canada" THEN ... |
Note that any white space (such as tabs and spaces) before
the ampersand and at the beginning of the continued line is part
of the string.
A problem The following statement
uses only the ampersand to continue the quoted string in the IF…THEN statement
to another line; for readability, a tab has been added to indent
the second line. The compiler includes the tab in the string, which
might result in an error:
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IF Employee_District = "Eastern United States and& |
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Eastern Canada" THEN ... |
A better way A better way to
continue a quoted string is to enter a quotation mark before the
continuation character ('& or "&,
depending on whether the string is delimited by single or double
quotation marks) at the end of the first line of the string and
a plus sign and a quotation mark (+' or +")
at the start of the next line. This way, you do not inadvertently
include unwanted characters (such as tabs or spaces) in the string
literal:
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IF Employee_District = "Eastern United States and "& |
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+" Eastern Canada" THEN ... |
The examples in the PowerBuilder documentation use this method
to continue quoted strings.
Continuing a variable name
Do not split a line
by inserting the continuation character within a variable name.
This causes an error and the statement fails, because the continuation
character splits the variable name “Quantity”:
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Total-Cost = Price * Quan& |
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tity + (Tax + Shipping) |