Guidelines for Writing a Report Program

Suggested outline of a report program

As a general rule, the commands in a report program should be placed in the sequence shown in the following table.

Program Section	Commands
Initialization	PUSHLEVEL command PUSH commands TRAP ON command ZEROTOTAL command Commands to set format options OUTFILE command PAGING command Commands to set paging options
Body	LIMIT commands ROW and HEADING commands
Normal Exit	OUTFILE EOF command POPLEVEL command RETURN command
Abnormal Exit	Error label Error-handling commands OUTFILE EOF command POPLEVEL command

In addition to organizing your report program as suggested in the above table, you should follow the suggestions that this manual provides for organizing and testing any type of program.

Tips on aligning report columns

When you test a report program, the problem you are most likely to encounter is that the report columns do not line up properly. You can avoid most column alignment problems by following these general rules:

• Use identical ACROSS groups in your HEADING and ROW commands.

• Use identical values of WIDTH and SPACE in your HEADING and ROW commands.

• When appropriate, you might also need to use identical values for INDENT, LEFT, RIGHT, and CENTER in your HEADING and ROW commands.