The FORMAT Statement
To set formatting options statically in the program, use the FORMAT statement as follows:
Syntax
FORMAT option1 [ON|OFF] option2 [ON|OFF] ....
The formatting options option 1 option 2 ... set in the FORMAT statement apply to all subsequent output until they are turned off using the OFF option. The ON option to turn on a formatting option is optional, that is, you can leave it out.
To set the formatting options dynamically at runtime, use the FORMAT statement as follows:
Syntax
FORMAT option1 = var1 option2 = var2 ....
The variables var1 var2 … are interpreted as numbers and should be declared with data type i . If the contents of var1 var2 … is zero, the variable has the same effect as the OFF option. If the contents of var1 var2 … is unequal to zero, the variable either has the same effect as the ON option or, together with the COLOR option, acts like the corresponding color number (see Colors in Lists ).
If you use the same formatting options for a WRITE statement that follows the FORMAT statement, the settings of the WRITE statement overwrite the corresponding settings of the FORMAT statement for the current output.
For each new event, the system resets all formatting options to their default values. For a list of events, see Events and their Event Keywords . All formatting options have the default value OFF , except the INTENSIFIED option (see Colors in Lists ).
To set all formatting options to OFF in one go, use:
Syntax
FORMAT RESET.
The following sections describe the available formatting options.