KnowledgeBase 00120: Entering Mark Characters from the Keyboard

Last updated: 17 Feb 2017 Applies to: All versions

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This article was originally published as a Tip of the Week.

Sometimes it is useful for application developers and system administrators to be able to include mark characters in data entered from the keyboard. This facility should not be enabled for end users of an application as it has the possibility of corrupting data if the application does not apply rigorous validation of incoming data.

The PTERM MARK Command

Use of

   PTERM MARK ON 

enables translation of three control characters to the mark characters used to mark the boundaries between fields, values and subvalues in dynamic arrays.

Ctrl-^	Character 254, Field mark
Ctrl-]	Character 253, Value mark
Ctrl-\	Character 252, Subvalue mark

Use of

   PTERM MARK OFF 

disables this translation, resulting in

Ctrl-^	Character 30, ASCII RS
Ctrl-]	Character 29, ASCII GS
Ctrl-\	Character 28, ASCII FS

Using the PTERM MARK command without the ON or OFF qualifier displays the current setting. Mark character translation is off by default.

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