INITIALIZE

The INITIALIZE statement assigns initial values to variables.

After you declare a variable with a DEFINE statement, the Source Compiler allocates memory to that variable. The contents of the variable, however, is whatever happens to occupy that memory location. The INITIALIZE statement can specify initial values for 4GL variables in either of two ways:

The LIKE keyword assigns the default values of a specified database column, using values from the syscolval table.

You can use the TO NULL keywords to assign NULL values, using the representation of NULL for the declared data type of each variable.

The List of Variables

This comma-separated list specifies the variables to be initialized:

array is the name of a variable of the ARRAY data type.

first is the name of a member variable to be initialized.

last is another member of record that was declared later than first.

record is the name of a variable of the RECORD data type.

• ariable is the name of a variable of a simple data type

The Initialize LIKE Clause

The LIKE clause specifies default values from one or more syscolval columns.

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database is the name of the database in which the first column resides.

first is the name of a database column.

last is the name of another column of table that is described later than first in the syscolumns table in the system catalog of database.

owner is the login name of the owner of table.

server is the name of the OnLine server. The @ symbol is required.

table is the name of the table, view, or synonym that contains column.

References

DATABASE

DEFINE

GLOBALS

LET

VALIDATE