The class that exports the functionality that a user is interested in.
Methods
Attributes
| io | [RW] | Set the IO that the format will be printed to, from stdout to a file for example. |
Public Class methods
Create a new format with the given top, bottom, and middle formats. One argument will default to a top while two will give you a top and a middle. If you want a bottom and no top you’ll need to pass an empty format in as the first argument or a nil. The output defaults to standard out but can be changed with the Format.io= method.
The format is a string in the style of a perl format or an array of strings each of which is a line of a perl format. The passed in format contains multiple lines, picture lines and argument lines. A picture line can contain any text but if it contains an at field (@ followed by any number of <,>,| or a group of #’s of the format #*.#* or #*) it must be followed by an argument line. The arguments in the argument line are inserted in place of the at fields in the picture line. Perl documentation for formats can be found here: www.cpan.org/doc/manual/html/pod/perlform.html An example of a format is
format = <<DOT
Name: @<<< @<<<<<
first_name last_name
DOT
This line specifies that when requested one line should be printed and that it will say "Name: #{first_name} #{last_name}\n" but that if either of those variables is longer than the length its format the result will be truncated to the length of the format.
An at field specified as @<* specifies that the variable should be left justified within the space allocated. @>* is right justified, and @| is centered. #’s are used to print numbers and can be used to set the number of digits after the decimal point. However the whole number portion of an argument will always be printed in its entirety even if it takes space set for the fractional portion or even more space. If the fractional portion is not long enough to fill the described space it will be padded with 0s.
Public Instance methods
If you’re writing to the file handle in another way than by calling printFormat you can keep the pagination working using this call to correctly keep track of lines.
When you don’t want anymore on this page just fill it with blank lines and print the bottom if it’s there, print a ^L also. This is good if you want to finish off the page but print more later to the same file.
When you don’t want anymore on this page just fill it with blank lines and print the bottom if it’s there. Don‘t print a ^L at the end. This is good if this will be the last page.
Return how many times the top has been printed. You can use this to number pages. An empty top can be used if you need the page number but don’t want to print any other header. This is a somewhat interesting function as the bottom is only printed when a page is finished or a top is needed. If this is the case we’ll pretend the page number is one h
Print out the specified format. You need to pass in a Binding object for the variables that will be used in the format. This is usually just a call to Kernel.binding. The next argument gives a file handler to print to. This is useful so that a top or bottom’s output get written to the same place as the main format is going even if their formats have a different io when they’re not attached.
Sets the variable that says how many lines may be printed to the maximum for the page which can be set using setPageLength (anInt). Defaults to 60.
Set a format to print at the end of a page. This is tricky and you should be careful using it. It currently has problems on short pages (at least). In order for a bottom to show up you need to finish off a page. This means that formats less than a page will need to be finished off with a call to one of the finishPageWith[out]FF methods.
Sets the number of lines on a page. If you don’t want page breaks set this to some large number that you hope you won’t offset or liberally use resetPage. The default is 60.