filePro / environment variables / putenv

[Jean-Pierre A. Radley]

Ken Brody propounded (on Tue, Mar 22, 2005 at 11:36:51AM -0500):
| Let me clarify something about filePro's use of environment/config variables
| and the PUTENV statement.
| 
| When filePro starts, it reads the config file once.  If someone were to edit
| the file afterwards, any running filePro program will not see any of those
| changes.
| 
| For most variables, filePro reads its value only once, the first time it
| needs to use it.  If you use PUTENV to set/change the value of a variable
| prior to filePro's first look at it, filePro will see the new value.
| 
| For example, TEXTNORMAL is needed immediately upon startup, so using PUTENV
| to change it will have no effect on the current program.  (It will, of
| course, affect anything run via SYSTEM.)
| 
| However, PFONEHEAD is not needed until filePro needs to print a page header.
| Therefore, using PUTENV to change its value prior to anything being printed,
| such as in @ONCE or while processing the very first output record, will have
| the desired effect.
| 
| I happen to use a similar setting myself.  I have an import process that
| needs to import a text file with very long lines.  In my @ONCE event, I have
| a PUTENV "PFIMPBUF","32000" to ensure that PFIMPBUF is set, regardless of
| any config file setting.

You're saying that it will set the value of a parameter in the
environment of the running program, providing that that parameter was
not already set?

-- 
JP