Programming Guide

Declares parameters in the unnamed procedure of a JPL module

parms [ deref ] paramName[, paramName]...

deref

Specifies to pass in the values of the caller's arguments. If you omit the deref qualifier, JPL passes in the literal value of the caller's arguments. In the case of a variable, JPL passes in the name of the variable instead of its value. Omit this argument if you use the parms command to get the standard arguments passed in by a field, group, or screen.

paramName

The name of the parameter, where paramName is a string that contains up to 31 characters. JPL parameter names can use any combination of letters, digits, or underscores, where the first character is not a digit. Panther also allows usage of two special characters, the dollar sign ($) and period (.).

The parms command declares one or more parameters in a JPL module's unnamed procedure. An unnamed procedure must be the first procedure in a JPL module; because this procedure omits the proc statement, you must use the parms command to receive any arguments that are passed in by its caller. Also use it in a field's validation module or in an external non-public JPL module to get the standard arguments passed by screens, groups, and fields. For more information about the standard arguments available for screen modules, refer to "Screen Function Arguments" in Application Development Guide; for widget modules, refer to "Field Function Arguments". parms statement can declare up to twenty comma-delimited parameters. If you declare more parameters than are actually passed, Panther initializes the extra parameters to empty strings. If you declare fewer, the undeclared parameters are inaccessible. Like variables, parameters that are declared in a module's unnamed procedure are accessible to all procedures in that module.

// call module calculatecall calculate(subtotal, state)

//first unnamed procedure in module calculate
parms amt, st
if st == 'CA'
  tax = 0.0725
else if st == 'NY'
  tax = 0.085
else
  tax = 0.00
total = amt * (1 + tax) 

vars, proc

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