Positional Directives (Magic xpa 3.x)

A positional directive is a picture character that serves as a placeholder and is then interpreted with respect to its position in the picture string. For example, in the following three pictures:

UXX, XUX, XXU

Each defines a different 3-byte Alpha variable.

The positional directive U for an Alpha variable instructs Magic xpa to convert the character corresponding to the U position to upper case during data entry from the keyboard. The picture UXX causes the conversion of the first typed character to upper case, while XUX causes the conversion of the second typed character, and so on. Therefore, the position of any positional directive is critical.

Note that all positional directives must appear in upper case.

Positional directives may appear several times in a picture. For a shortcut method of specifying consecutive repeated mask characters, see Count Value.