Progress
Language Reference
INPUT FROM Statement
Specifies a new input source.
SYNTAX
STREAM stream
Specifies the name of a stream. If you do not name a stream, Progress uses the unnamed stream. See the DEFINE STREAM Statement reference entry and the Progress Programming Handbook for more information on streams.
opsys-file
The name of the file that contains the data you want to input to a procedure. If you do not specify a full pathname, Progress looks for the file in your working directory. Also, remember that UNIX file names are case sensitive.
opsys-device
The name of a UNIX or Windows device.
TERMINAL
Indicates that you want to get input from your terminal. The terminal is the default input source. You cannot use TERMINAL with STREAM.
VALUE ( expression )
An expression whose value is the source where you want to input data.
OS-DIR (directory)[ NO-ATTR-LIST ]
Indicates that you want your input to be the filenames found in directory. The value of directory is a character expression specifying an operating system directory. If directory is not a directory or you do not have permission to read it, then the INPUT statement raises ERROR. Otherwise, Progress generates the directory list and feeds it back to the calling program through the INPUT stream. An INPUT CLOSE statement discards any unread filenames from the list.
Each line read from the input stream is a string composed of three tokens: the file’s base name, the file’s absolute path name, and an attribute list consisting of one or more of the characters FDSMXHLP, unless you specified the NO-ATTR-LIST option. If you specified that option, you will not get the string attribute for each line of the resulting list. You are guaranteed to get exactly one of:
- F — Regular file or FIFO pipe
- D — Directory
- S — Special device
- M — Member of a PROLIB
- X — Unknown file type
You might also get one or more of:
- H — Hidden file
- L — Symbolic link
- P — Pipe file
The two filenames in each input line are in EXPORT format; that is, they are enclosed in quotes and any embedded quotes are doubled. This means that INPUT FROM can process any filename, containing any characters, as long as IMPORT is used to read the input.
NO-ATTR-LIST
Omits the string attribute field that indicates the type of the file. This can speed up program execution. An example of this form of the statement is as follows:
BINARY
Allows all input to be read directly without any conversion or interpretation. By default, NUL (\0) terminates character strings, and other control characters are interpreted as expected for the operating system.
ECHO
Displays all input data on the current output device. Data is echoed by default.
NO-ECHO
Accepts input data without displaying it on the current output device. If you do not use this option, INPUT FROM automatically displays input data on the current output device.
MAP protermcap-entry | NO MAP
The protermcap-entry value is an entry from the PROTERMCAP file. Use MAP to read from an input stream that uses a different character translation from the current stream. Typically, protermcap-entry is a slash-separated combination of a standard device entry and one or more language-specific add-on entries (MAP laserwriter/french or MAP hp2/spanish/italian, for example). Progress uses the PROTERMCAP entries to build a translation table for the stream. Use NO-MAP to make Progress bypass character translation altogether. See the Progress Internationalization Guide for more information on PROTERMCAP and national language support.
UNBUFFERED
Reads one character at a time from a normally buffered data source, such as a file. Use the UNBUFFERED option only when you can intermingle the input operations of a UNIX process, invoked with the Progress UNIX statement, with the input that follows the Progress INPUT FROM statement.
CONVERT
Allows you to modify the character conversions occurring between the external file and Progress. By default, the INPUT FROM statement converts characters from the code page specified with the Stream Code Page (-cpstream) parameter to the code page specified with the Internal Code Page (-cpinternal) parameter. If you specify SOURCE source-codepage alone, the conversion accepts source-codepage as the code page name of the external file (instead of -cpstream). If you specify TARGET target-codepage, the conversion accepts target-codepage as the internal code page (instead of -cpinternal). If you specify both SOURCE source-codepage and TARGET target-codepage, it converts characters from the source-codepage to target-codepage (instead of -cpstream to -cpinternal).
TARGET target-codepage
Specifies the target code page of the character conversion (replacing -cpinternal). The name that you specify must be a valid code page name available in the
DLC/convmap.cp
file (a binary file that contains all of the tables that Progress uses for character management).SOURCE target-codepage
Specifies the source code page of the character conversion (replacing -cpstream). The name that you specify must be a valid code page name available in the
DLC/convmap.cp
file (a binary file that contains all of the tables that Progress uses for character management).NO-CONVERT
Specifies that no character conversions occur between the external file and memory. By default, the INPUT FROM statement converts characters from the -cpstream code page to the -cpinternal code page.
EXAMPLEInstead of getting input from the terminal, this procedure gets input from a file named
r-in.dat
. The SEARCH function determines the full pathname of this file.
This is what the contents of the
r-in.dat
file look like.
The PROMPT-FOR statement uses the first data item (1) as the cust-num and the second data item (55800) as the credit-limit. The FIND statement finds the customer whose cust-num is 1 and assigns the value of 55800 as that customer’s credit limit. On the next iteration of the REPEAT block, the PROMPT-FOR statement uses the value of 2 as the cust-num, the value of 41300 as the credit-limit, etc.
The INPUT CLOSE statement closes the input source, resetting it to the terminal. When you run this procedure, the data in the window is simply an echo of the data that the procedure is reading from the
taxno.dat
file. If you do not want to display the data, add the word NO-ECHO to the end of the INPUT FROM statement.NOTES
- To close the current input to a procedure, use the INPUT CLOSE statement. (The input source is automatically closed at the end of the procedure or when another default input source is opened.)
- The BINARY option allows you to use the READKEY statement to read control characters from the input source without interpretation. For example, NUL (\0) does not terminate strings, CTRL-Z does not signal EOF, and CTRL-J is not converted to CTRL-M, but their binary values are provided directly.
- If the input source and output destination are both the TERMINAL, then ECHO is always in effect.
- Use the INSERT, PROMPT-FOR, SET, or UPDATE statements to read data into a Progress procedure. The data is placed into the frame fields referenced in these statements, and, if you use ECHO, then the frame is output to the current output destination. If you use the NO-ECHO option, then the frame is not output. If a subsequent DISPLAY statement causes the frame to appear, then the input data also appears if the frame is not yet in view.
- SEEK is not supported in conjunction with the OS-DIR option.
- When using the OS-DIR option, the UNBUFFERED option is ignored. OS-DIR always buffers exactly one filename at a time.
- If you use the PROMPT-FOR, SET, or UPDATE statement to read data from a file, the FORMAT for the data is ignored. Therefore, if you rely on FORMAT to validate input, you might read invalid characters.
- If you use the PROMPT-FOR, SET, or UPDATE statement to read data from a file, and there is a piece of data in each line of the file that you want to disregard, use a caret (^) in the PROMPT-FOR, SET, or UPDATE statement. For more information on this symbol, see the reference entry for any of those statements.
- If end of file is reached, Progress responds as if you pressed ENDKEY.
- If a line consisting of a single period is read, that is treated as if you pressed END-ERROR. If the period is in quotes (".") it is treated as an ordinary character.
- When you use the INPUT FROM statement to read data from a file, there are two special characters you can use in that data file: tilde (~) and (slash (\) on UNIX, and hyphen (-).
If characters in an input file take up more than one physical line, you can use tilde (~) to indicate a line continuation. This is an input file that uses a tilde.
Do not include a space after the tilde.
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- You can see that the record containing the tilde was treated as a single input line.
- A hyphen in an input file indicates that you do not want to change the corresponding field in the INSERT, PROMPT-FOR, SET or UPDATE statement. This is the same input file shown above, including the hyphen.
The procedure in the following example uses this file to set records in the customer file. When those records are displayed, the Match Point Tennis address does not change.
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To enter a literal hyphen from a file, enclose it in quotes ("-").
- On Windows, the data in the input file must have the following characteristics:
- For any character conversions to occur, all of the necessary conversion tables must appear in
convmap.cp
(a binary file that contains all of the tables that Progress uses for character management).- If you specify a value of “undefined” for either source-codepage or target-codepage, no character conversion is performed.
- If the field being input is MEMPTR, you must use the BINARY and NO-CONVERT mode of operation to prevent your data from becoming corrupted if it contains binary data.
- With the BINARY and NO-CONVERT options, you will not get a translation of new-lines to the appropriate characters for your operating system and there will be no codepage conversion between -cpinternal and -cpstream.
- If the field being input is MEMPTR and your MEMPTR contains ASCII data you may want codepage conversion. However, you cannot get conversion by using the CONVERT parameter on the MEMPTR. You can get codepage conversion by using the MEMPTR with the GET-STRING and CODEPAGE-CONVERT functions and the PUT-STRING statement.
SEE ALSO
DEFINE STREAM Statement, INPUT CLOSE Statement, INPUT THROUGH Statement
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