Searching the Help
To search for information in the Help, type a word or phrase in the Search box. When you enter a group of words, OR is inferred. You can use Boolean operators to refine your search.
Results returned are case insensitive. However, results ranking takes case into account and assigns higher scores to case matches. Therefore, a search for "cats" followed by a search for "Cats" would return the same number of Help topics, but the order in which the topics are listed would be different.
Words and Phrases
| Search for | Example | Results |
|---|---|---|
| A single word | cat
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Topics that contain the word "cat". You will also find its grammatical variations, such as "cats". |
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A phrase. You can specify that the search results contain a specific phrase. |
"cat food" (quotation marks) |
Topics that contain the literal phrase "cat food" and all its grammatical variations. Without the quotation marks, the query is equivalent to specifying an OR operator, which finds topics with one of the individual words instead of the phrase. |
Using Boolean Operators
| Search for | Operator | Example |
|---|---|---|
|
Two or more words in the same topic |
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| Either word in a topic |
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| Topics that do not contain a specific word or phrase |
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| Topics that contain one string and do not contain another | ^ (caret) |
cat ^ mouse
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| A combination of search types | ( ) parentheses |
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Format Control system functions
Many of the Service Manager system functions are used to create expressions in Format Control. The following is a list of the most commonly used functions:
| Function | Description |
|---|---|
| denull() | Compresses an array by deleting all trailing NULL entries and returns the compressed array. |
| index() | Returns the index or position number for a specific element value in an array or character in a string. If the target value is not in the array or string, it returns 0 (zero). |
| lng() | Returns the number of elements in an array or structure and the number of characters in a string. |
| nullsub() | Replaces a null value with a known value, eliminating the possibility that expressions will return null or unknown results. |
| operator() | Returns the logon id of the current operator. |
| str() | Converts a non–string data type into a string. |
| substr() | Extracts a substring from a string. |
| tod() | Returns the current date and time. |
| val() | Converts a field into a numeric, logical, or date/time value. |
Related topics
Format Control
Using expressions in Format Control
Format Control Boolean (logical) fields
Format Control file variable
