Added January 2011

cformat switch:  " " (blank)

When used in conjunction with a Mask, this code causes any leading spaces introduced as a result of the mask formatting to be preserved within the field. (Normally they are stripped before applying the column's justification.)

This rather obscure feature may be useful in property sheets where you want to right justify some fields, but don't want them justified all the way to the right edge of the edit column (which may be wider than appropriate for the items in question, due to other, longer text items). For example, if  you have some numeric items that you want to right justify (so that they  line up with each other) but don't want way over at the right edge of the column, you can specify the combination of "<" (left justify), " " (no strip), and "Mask=###,###,###,###.##". The "<" will force the data to be left justified in the cell, but the no strip option will effectively  preserve right justification (provided that you are using a fixed pitch font). Typically in this case, you'll want to make the column and mask wider than you would otherwise need, so that the displayed values are pushed farther to the right. The sample program XTRA15.BP in EXLIB:[908,21] has been updated to illustrate this.

History

2011 January, A-Shell 5.1.1202:  Added to A-Shell