UPSHIFT

Discussion

The UPSHIFT statement can be used to format data entered into or moved to any field. (For automatic formatting, refer to the SET command earlier in this section.) This statement causes all alphabetic characters to be replaced with their uppercase counterparts. If edit statements expect data to be uppercase but it could be entered in lowercase, this statement should be executed prior to the edit statement. With Native Language Support, if a native language ID has been specified in the forms file, the UPSHIFT formatting statement will use native language upshift tables. For more information on Native Language Support, see Section 8.

As is true of all formatting statements, UPSHIFT has an immediate effect on the data in the memory buffer; the formatted data is then available for display or copying into the application. When the user enters data into a field for which formatting is specified, the data is formatted as soon as ENTER or an appropriate function key is pressed. Thus, FORMSPEC formatting is done before data is written to the data or batch file. (In contrast, reformatting through REFORMAT, described in Section 5, is done after data is collected, edited, and written to the batch file.)

Example

Suppose the field contains an United States state code that is to be checked against a list of uppercase state codes. The following statements ensure that codes entered in lowercase pass the edit:

   UPSHIFT
   IN "NY","NJ","PA"