Picture Formats (Magic xpi 3.x)

A picture is a string of characters that tells Magic xpi how to define the format of an attribute. Magic xpi automatically defines the most commonly used pictures for data items that have known attributes (for example, dates).

You may be required to specify a picture in two different situations:

1. In a Data Mapper flat file Source or Destination, on the flat file fields.

2. To specify data conversion rules for Magic xpi data conversion functions. For ex ample, the Str function translates a numeric attribute to a string representation. Therefore Str (712.93, '###.####') returns the string 712.9300.

The picture string is composed of three basic types of characters:

1. Functional directives.

2. Positional directives.

3. Mask characters.

Each Magic xpi attribute has its own set of picture directives.

Related Topics

Directives for Alpha Pictures

Directives for Numeric Pictures

Directives for Date Pictures

Directives for Time Pictures

Syntax Rules