Welcome!

Java Authors: Patrick Burke, Jeremy Geelan, Mario Meir-Huber, Maureen O'Gara, Liz McMillan

Related Topics: PowerBuilder

PowerBuilder: Article

Some Old Things Do Change

Minor unannounced enhancement to MessageBox
By Yakov Werde
Article Rating:
April 12, 2011 12:55 PM EDT
Reads:
 2,110

Not sure when this sneaked in...

I was working on some new DataWindow object courseware with version 12.1 last week when I stumbled onto this little change.  For those of you with a penchant for using the Messagebox function for debugging, you might find this interesting

Used to be that this line of code (or any other .object property expression) would give you a compiler error

Messagebox(dw1.object.id.name, dw1.object.id.tag)

You'd get the same error if you used the DWO reference in a datawindow event.

Messagebox was expecting two strings and although both the Name and the Tag were stored as strings, the expression would return them wrapped in an ANY.

On a lark, I tried this line of code out in the Classic IDE version 12.1 March EBF, and lo and behold it compiled!  Not sure which engineer slipped this enhancement into the compiler, but may he or she be blessed forever.

Published April 12, 2011 – Reads 2,110
Copyright © 2011 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.

More Stories By Yakov Werde

Yakov Werde, a 25 year IT industry veteran, is a member of TeamSybase and the newly formed Sybase Customer Evangelist Team. Yakov is a recognized author, speaker and trainer who has been designing and delivering PowerBuilder, .NET, EaServer, Web App Development, and Java training for over 14 years to corporate, military and government developers. Prior to discovering his aptitude as an educator, Yakov worked as an architect, project manager and application coder in the trenches of application software development. Yakov holds a Masters in Education with a specialty in instructional design for online learning from Capella University and a BS in math and computer science from Florida International University. Yakov, managing partner of eLearnIT LLC (www.elearnitonline.com), authors and delivers workshops and web based eLearning tutorials to guide professional developers toward PowerBuilder Classic and .NET mastery. Follow Yakov on Twitter as @eLearnPB