Help Clause - HP DDL D40 Reference Manual

Definition Attributes

HELP Clause

The HELP clause enables you to associate help text with a group or elementary item in
a DEFINITION or a RECORD statement.
DDL ignores the HELP clause when generating host-language source code.
HELP { "help-text" | constant-name }
help-text
is any ASCII or national string enclosed in quotation marks.
constant-name
is the name of a constant in the open DDL dictionary. The constant value must be
a valid help-text value.
HELP Clause Guidelines
The following points are guidelines for using the HELP clause:
Single lines of text should not exceed 77 characters if you plan to generate a
Pathmaker application; help text must be less than or equal to 77 characters to fit
on a Pathmaker screen. If a single line of text does exceed 77 characters, you will
receive a warning message.
The ASCII quotation mark character (") can be represented within a help text string
by using two consecutive quotation marks ("").
Help text appears on DDL schema listings. Help text is displayed on the screen
when an end user requests help from NonStop™ Transaction Services/MP
(NonStop™ TS/MP) applications generated by the Pathmaker product.
Use of a comma between help text strings is optional. If you do not use a comma,
you must delimit consecutive help strings by blanks or carriage returns.
Help text cannot be specified for any of these:
Level 66 RENAMES clauses
Level 88 condition-name clauses
Record names
File creation information
If a definition or record that includes help text refers to a definition that also
includes help text, the help text in the referring definition or record overrides the
help text in the referenced definition.
Data Definition Language (DDL) Reference Manual—426798-002
[ [ , ] "help-text" | [ , ] constant-name ] ...
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HELP Clause