Generating Reports › Defining the Report Data › Placing Individual Fields in the Detail Line › Defining Column Width

Defining Column Width

The width value specifies the maximum width of the field. If you do not specify a width value, RDF uses the largest of the following values:

• The actual width of the source field.
• The width of the column heading.
• The width of the column heading, plus 4 if summary information is requested for the field (for more information about summaries, see the section Generating the Bottom Line later in this chapter).
• The width specified by the edit pattern.

The width value should correspond to the edit pattern, but that is not required. Data is truncated if it cannot fit in the space allotted by the width. In the previous screen, the fields do not have a defined edit pattern.

The column width determines the length of the report field. It must be a positive integer. When using functions (such as $SUBSTR) to define a field, do not specify a width of zero.