&SUBSTR

Extract a substring from a string, starting with startcolumn and continuing for length .

Restriction: This topic applies only when the AppMaster Builder AddPack has been installed, and applies only to Windows platforms.

Syntax:

&SUBSTR( string, startcolumn[, length])

Aliases:

&substr( string, startcolumn[, length])
&Substr( string, startcolumn[, length])

Parameters:

`String`	Can be an alphanumeric literal string delimited with quotation marks, a number, or a variable with a string value.
`Startcolumn` and `length`	Can be a number or variable; if `length` is omitted, the substring includes all characters from `startcolumn` onward.

Comments:

If startcolumn is greater than length, or if length is 0, the result is an empty string.
If startcolumn plus length is greater than length, the result begins with string start character and ends with its last character; the substring is not padded with blanks.

Examples:

Extract a substring from the string value of &PREFIX, starting with column 1 and continuing for 23 characters.

% &PREFIX = &SUBSTR( &PREFIX, 1, 23)

Extract substring values from the values of &RANDOM and &STUFF, and assign the result to MY-LANGUAGE. Note that &QT defines the delimiter character as the apostrophe; the quotation marks delimiting the string values are not considered part of the string and are stripped from the output.

Input:

% &QT = "'"
% &RANDOM = &SUBSTR( "MEANINGLESS", 1, 4)
% &STUFF = &SUBSTR( "EXAMPLE", 3, 5)
MY-LANGUAGE = &QT&RANDOM&STUFF&QT

Output:

MY-LANGUAGE = 'MEANAMPLE'

When the string argument is a number, AMB converts the number to a string and strips leading zeros as follows.

Coding	Yields
&SUBSTR( 012, 1, 2)	12
&SUBSTR( -12, 1, 2)	-1
&SUBSTR( -012, 1, 2)	-1