Report-Writer relies on three different groups of statements to print data in the correct place and format. These are:

You use these statements to:

The following discussions describe the process of positioning, formatting, and printing data in more detail.

Before you can print a value, indicate where it must be printed. As noted previously, Report-Writer automatically determines default column print positions from an analysis of the other report formatting statements. However, if you want to set up your own defaults, you can do so with the following column and block statements:

Using the .position statement, you can effectively set up margins for each column. This statement allows you to set the starting print position for a column and optionally, the width of the printed column in number of characters. You can also set the width of a column with the .width statement. All horizontal print positions start at 0 (left margin).

To print columns horizontally adjacent to each other, you must reference the column names within the same .print statement, separated by commas. If possible, Report-Writer can print the columns next to each other, at the positions specified in the .position statement(s) or at default print positions.

In some cases, however, the following block statements can be used to exercise more control over the printing of horizontally adjacent text:

The .block and .endblock statements allow you to define a block of formatting and print statements to be treated as a unit. Then, you can use the .top or .bottom statements to reset the current line to the top or bottom of the defined block before processing the next statement. The .within and .endwithin statements temporarily set the report margins to the margins for a referenced column. This allows you to print text (such as the caption, Total) within the column margins without having to calculate the exact print position.

For details, see Column and Block Statements in the chapter "Report-Writer Statements."

In addition to the column and block default‑setting statements, you generally use another group of statements, called text positioning statements, to tell Report-Writer how to position the text or data in relation to the default position. The text positioning statements are:

You can use the .tab statement with a column name to tab to the assigned print position for that column before issuing a .print statement. In addition to tabbing, text positioning statements allow you to center or justify text within the default column margins, or to position text at the beginning or end of a line or on another line.

You can also use the text positioning statements with explicit values (instead of column names) or variables for the tab setting, left and right justify positions, and so on. Explicitly set positions override column defaults.

For details, see Text Positioning Statements in the chapter "Report-Writer Statements."

The appearance of the text or data in your report is controlled by the format specification. For instance, the c format indicates a character string format and the e format causes a value to be printed in scientific notation. You can also specify the format with a template such as $zz,zzz.nn, containing characters with special meanings, which define the way a value is to be printed.

The print format can be specified in the .print statement, or can be used in a .format statement to set a default print format for a column, as in the code fragment:

The results might look like this:

You can temporarily override a default column format with the .tformat statement to print the next value only in a different format. After the value is printed, the format returns to the original default type. This is useful for printing a dollar sign only once at the start of a page, for instance.

You can also override a default format by specifying the format as a parameter in the .print statement, as in this example:

This code fragment causes Report-Writer to print salary values in the specified format, without the dollar sign, until it encounters another format or print statement for this column. For more information on print formats, see Format Specifications in the chapter "Report-Writer Expressions and Formats."

To indicate underlining of text or values, use the .underline and .nounderline statements. Any .print statements located between the .underline and .nounderline statements can produce underlined text. By default, the underline character is the underscore (_) for reports written to a file (reports written to the screen do not display underlining). You can change the default to any other character, using the .ulcharacter statement. All underline characters are printed on the line below the text, except for the underscore (_) character, which appears on the same line as the text. For more information on underlining, see Print Statements in the chapter "Report-Writer Statements

The actual text or value to be printed is specified as an expression in the .print statement syntax. The expression can be a column name, a constant, a function, an aggregate, a runtime report variable such as the current date and time, or a variable whose value is specified in a .declare or .let statement or on the command line, with or without a prompt.

By default, Report-Writer prints an empty string when it encounters a null value. You can change this default to any string of characters, using the .nullstring statement. For instance, you can tell Report-Writer to print the string "none" wherever it finds a null value in the data.

For more information on the .print and .nullstring statements, see Print Statements in the chapter "Report-Writer Statements."