How do I display a rolling counter? 2

[asks]

I want to continually display time while a long process is going on so that the time appears to ticking over like a clock. Don't know how to display my time field so it basically overwrites the previous display making it look like like time is passing. Any thoughts?

 

[slade]

Ask,

I think it's:

DISPLAY 'your text' WITH NO ADVANCE

If NG try NO ADVANCING

Jack

 

[asks]

Jack,

The No Advancing option will only keep the cursor where it is and not position it on the next field/line. It's effect is to diplay the counter seperately again and again and you end up lots of different messages each showing the time.

 

[slade]

Asks,

What environment, compiler, etc. are you using? Can you assign sysout directly to your terminal?

Jack

 

[asks]

ACUCOBOL on a PC running Windows 98.
You could be onto something with that suggestion.

 

[BettyScherber]

Some COBOL's have a ROW and COLUMN option right on the DISPLAY statement. Not sure about yours though. You might try looking it up. Betty Scherber
Brainbench MVP for COBOL II

http://www.brainbench.com

 

[asks]

Thanks Betty,
I've checked this and there is no option for Rows and Columns.

 

[BettyScherber]

You can probably use the WITH NO ADVANCING then, if you have a mechanism for defining a hex value in a character variable. If you can, you could declare an item like
this:

01 CARRIAGE-RETURN PIC X VALUE X'0D'.

Then in your DISPLAY, simply code:

DISPLAY CARRIAGE-RETURN whatever-else-you-want WITH NO ADVANCING.

If you can't create the hex value in your COBOL, you can probably use a REDEFINES to get the last half of a small binary item with a value of 13.

Hope this helps

Betty Scherber
Brainbench MVP for COBOL II

http://www.brainbench.com

 

[asks]

Thanks Betty,

That solution appeals to me.
I'll try it tonight.

 

[dixi]

Please have a look at extract from Acucobol (Versin 4.3) Online Help :

DISPLAY src-item

Format 1

DISPLAY src-item displays an individual field to the screen.

DISPLAY { {src-item}
{OMITTED }

[ UPON new-window ]

Remaining phrases are optional, can appear in any order.

AT screen-loc

AT LINE NUMBER line-num

AT {COLUMN } NUMBER col-num
{COL }
{POSITION}
{POS }

SIZE length

WITH NO ADVANCING

{ERASE} [TO END OF] {LINE } (VAX, ICOBOL)
{BLANK} {SCREEN}

{ERASE} [EOS] (RM)
{BLANK} [EOL]

WITH {BELL}
{BEEP}

{UNDERLINED}
{HIGHLIGHT }
{HIGH }
{BOLD }
{LOWLIGHT }
{LOW }
{STANDARD }

WITH {BLINKING}
{BLINK }

{REVERSE-VIDEO}
{REVERSE }
{REVERSED }

SAME

WITH {COLOR } color-val
{COLOUR}

{FOREGROUND-COLOR } IS fg-color
{FOREGROUND-COLOUR}

{BACKGROUND-COLOR } IS bg-color
{BACKGROUND-COLOUR}

SCROLL [UP ] [ BY scrl-num {LINE } ]
[DOWN] {LINES}

OUTPUT {JUSTIFIED} {LEFT }
{JUST } {RIGHT }
{CENTERED}

WITH {CONVERSION}
{CONVERT }

CONTROL cntrl-string

UPON CRT

} ...

Regards

Dixi

 

[asks]

Betty,

Unfortunately the Display of the Carriage Return character didn't work. Don't know why, I would have thought it would be O.K. It actually shows on the screen as a square symbol shaded white so it is displaying and I ensured the correct "0D" was being used.
Thanks

 

[asks]

Dixi,

Thanks for that, I'll check it out tonight.

 

[asks]

Thanks to Dixi and Betty,

Works a treat now.