Release 10.1A: OpenEdge Reporting:
Query/Results for UNIX

Determining the order criteria defined

Use the following shared variable in your procedures to determine the defined order criteria inside Results:

DEFINE SHARED VARIABLE qbf-order AS CHARACTER EXTENT 5 NO-UNDO.

This shared variable has these characteristics:

The shared variable qbf-order contains BY clauses.
Each element contains one of the order-by fields.
Results sets each unused array entry to the empty string (“”) and places it at the end of the array so that no gaps appear in qbf-order array.
Each element has the form “database.file-name.field-name [ DESC].” In this case, an optional blank space and the letters DESC are included after the name to indicate that the order field is descending. If the field is an array field, the field name is followed by a number square brackets (for example, [#], where # is the array element selected for ordering).
The values contained in the qbf-order variable are always database fields or calculated fields:

c = "". DO i = 1 TO 5 WHILE qbf-order[i] <> "": c = c + " BY " + qbf-order[i]. END. IF c <> "" THEN PUT UNFORMATTED SKIP "BREAK" c.

Note: This code is used in the u-export.p sample export format program in the "Designing your own export format" section.

When you run this program, it outputs the appropriate ordering for the report, export, or label program that was defined in Results.