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CHARSPREAD()
Expands a string at the tokens
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Syntax
CHARSPREAD(<cString>,<nLength>,
[<cCharacter|nCharacter>]) --> cString
Arguments
<cString> Designates a character string that is expanded with
spaces or <cCharacter>|<nCharacter> characters to <nLength> length.
<nLength> Designates the length of the return string.
<cCharacter|nCharacter> Designates the fill character and token
delimiter. It can be a numeric value or a character. If it is a
numeric value, it must be between 0 and 255. The default value is a
space CHR(32).
Returns
CHARSPREAD() returns the expanded string.
Description
CHARSPREAD() expands a string to a preset length. However, it behaves
differently than the EXPAND() function.
CHARSPREAD() uses <cCharacter|nCharacter> as the character to insert
during the expansion. The string is expanded between tokens delimited
by this character up to the length specified by <nLength>. This is
similar to full justification in a text editor.
Note
. Previously existing fill characters <cCharacter|nCharacter>
are not taken into account in the redistribution (see examples). If
this procedure is not satisfactory to you, then you can call the
CHARONE() for the string before you call CHARSPREAD().
Examples
For clarity, these examples do not contain blanks.
. When the delimiter does not appear in the string, no expansion
takes place:
? CHARSPREAD("123456", 20, ".") // "123456"
. This example shows a numeric code for the (".") character:
? CHARSPREAD("1.2.3.4.5.6", 20, 46) // "1...2...3..4...5...6"
. In this example, the fill character is already there:
? CHARSPREAD("11..22..33", ".") // "11.......22.......33"
? CHARSPREAD("11.22........33", 20, ".")
// "11....22..........33"
See Also: EXPAND() CHARONE()
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