$SirMsg

Line of current $SirMsgP procedure

Most Sirius $functions have been deprecated in favor of Object Oriented methods. There is no OO equivalent for the $SirMsg function.

The $SirMsg function is used to retrieve a line from the current $SirMsg procedure as set by $SirMsgP.

$SirMsg accepts one required argument, and it returns a string.

The argument is the number of the line within the current $SirMsg procedure to be returned. A zero returns the name of the current $SirMsg procedure.

If there is no current $SirMsg procedure or the requested line number is invalid (negative or greater than the number of lines in the $SirMsg procedure), $SirMsg returns a null string.

Syntax

<section begin="syntax" />%MSG = $SirMsg (line_num) <section end="syntax" />

%MSG is set to the contents of line_num in the current $SirMsg procedure.

$SirMsgP and $SirMsg allow a programmer to use a Model 204 procedure as a message repository. Each line of the procedure corresponds to a message that can be requested by line number with $SirMsg. The advantages of using $SirMsg are:

• No server space is wasted holding infrequently used error messages.
• The virtual storage holding the messages can be shared among users.
• It simplifies sharing common messages among procedures in a subsystem or online.

Suppose the current $SirMsg procedure as set by $SirMsgP contains these lines:

MSG0001 Invalid PF key. MSG0002 Record not found. MSG0003 Invalid data in input field.

The following statement would print: MSG0002 Record not found.

PRINT $SirMsg(2)

The following statement would print a null string:

PRINT $SirMsg(4)