The CI provides a looping structure through the WHILE and ENDWHILE statements. Combined with the expression evaluator functions, a series of statements can be repeated as long as a particular condition exists. The MENU command file provides a processing loop that continues prompting for the user's response and selecting the proper subroutine until the user selects 0 to exit the routine.
SETVAR CHOICE " "
WHILE CHOICE <> "0" DO
ECHO Enter 0 to exit.
ECHO 1 to review database.
ECHO 2 to update database.
INPUT CHOICE,"Which number do you select?",15
IF CHOICE = "1" THEN
DBREVIEW
ELSEIF CHOICE = "2" THEN
DBUPDATE
ENDIF
ENDWHILE
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Often an index is set and evaluated for processing elements of an array. Although the CI does not support data arrays or tables, variable names can be constructed so that a portion of the name can be incremented to access several variables in a sequence, similar to array or table processing.
In the following example, a simulated array of data has been created by appending sequential numbers to a common variable name. The variables range from RM_ARRAY1 to RM_ARRAYn, depending on the number of elements needed. In this example, the variable RM_ARRAY0 contains the number of elements used in the sequence.
Each variable in this example is accessed in turn by concatenating the common portion of the variable name with an incremented index variable, creating the sequence of variable names. The processing loop continues to access consecutive variables until the index exceeds the value of RM_ARRAY0.
SETVAR RM_INDEX 1
WHILE RM_INDEX <= RM_ARRAY0 DO
ECHO Purging !"RM_ARRAY!RM_INDEX" now.
PURGE !"RM_ARRAY!RM_INDEX"
SETVAR RM_INDEX RM_INDEX+1
ENDWHILE
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