One little-known feature of the AS/400 SEU editor is the ability to design your own prompt screens. I created my own prompt to help me maintain my "Programmer's Log" in SEU. This is how I created it.

While on the SEU edit display, type the line command IP?. This brings up the Select Prompt display. Press F23 for the User-Defined Prompt display.

Type PL in the "Create a prompt..." field. Press Enter.

On the User-Defined Prompt Definition display, enter PROJECT for the "New field..." and enter Programmer Log for "Prompt text..."

The next two steps require you to complete the information to define the Project Number heading and then the attributes of the field itself - its length, where it appears on the screen, highlighting, and so on.

On the Field Description display, enter Project for the field text. This will become the heading. Put the heading on line 17 starting in column 1. Select Y for highlighting.

After pressing Enter, the next screen you will see is for the field attributes. Put the PROJECT field on line 18 (below the heading), starting on column 1. Make it 10 alphameric characters long. For "Column in the source record..." start the project number in position 1. Underline the field by specifying a Y where you see the "Underline..." prompt.

Two more fields must be defined: DESCWORK, description of work done; and HOURS, which stands for the number of hours spent on the task described in DESCWORK. You will now repeat the above two steps.

Press the Backtab key twice and enter DESCWORK as the next new field.

Complete the User Prompt Field Description screen with entries as follows. The heading will be Description of Work Done on line 17 starting in column 12 and will be displayed in high intensity. Enter a Y for highlighting.

The input area for DESCWORK (User Prompt Field Attribute screen) will be 65 characters long positioned on line 18 starting in column 12. Underline it. The actual start position in the source record should be 11.

The HOURS field simply has the heading Hours. Put it on line 19 starting in column 1. Highlight it. For the field attributes, specify 3 for the "Data type..." prompt. This indicates numeric data will be entered in this field. The line on the display will be 20 starting in column 1. Field length is 5 and the column in the source record will be 76. Specify Y for underline.

Press F10 to save your work before exiting the Work With User-Defined Prompt Definition screen. Press F11 to get a preview of what the PL prompt looks like. If everything went alright, you have created a prompt that looks like the one shown in 4.

Press F10 to save your work before exiting the Work With User-Defined Prompt Definition screen. Press F11 to get a preview of what the PL prompt looks like. If everything went alright, you have created a prompt that looks like the one shown in Figure 4.

The data will appear in the source record as follows:

 Field From To PROJECT 1 10 DESCWORK 11 75 HOURS 76 80 

To test your newly defined prompt, use the SEU line command IPPL which stands for Insert Prompt Programmer Log. Key in some data and press Enter.

There is no interface to syntax check your user-defined fields, nor is there Help key support for user prompts. Prompts can only appear from line 6 to line 20 on a standard display. Field headings must be on a single line and cannot be stacked.

What user-defined prompts can do, and what I believe to be the intent of this feature, is to help programmers maintain tabular data in source members. Whether it is programmer log notes or program source code indented just the way the programmer wants, a user prompt can help extend the power of SEU.

Steven Kontos Woodbury, New York

TechTalk: User Defined Prompt Screens in SEU

Figure 4 User-defined SEU prompt: PL

 Figure 4: User-Defined SEU Prompt: PL Project Description of Work Done __________ ________________________________________________________ Hours _____