ColumnHelper command

I have an old procedure that I’ve been running for quite some time. It has a command in it called ColumnHelper and for the life of m,e I can’t recall what it does and can’t find any reference to it in documentation. Anyone remember what this does?

Leo

Does the procedure do anything different if you comment that statement out?

Any chance it is a typo? In the Programmer’s Reference wizard I am finding only one statement containing the word “helper”: MATRIXBUTTONHELPER. — “Columns” could be related to matrices, too …

ColumnHelper complies properly in Pan 6 but gets the “Unknown Statement” error in Pan X. Found no mention in any of the Custom Statement libraries. Might have been an undocumented command that was for in-house use at ProVUE. Don’t have a clue as to what it might have done - if anything.

Since this is Leo’s procedure, he either wrote that statement, or the recorder wrote it while he was performing some action. My money is on the recorder.

Seems to make no difference in running the procedure which is quite large and complex. I vaguely remember reading about this statement some time ago and inserting it in the procedure, I just can’t remember what it did, if anything anymore. Perhaps Jim can shed some light?

There is definitely an undocumented columnhelper statement in Panorama 6. I have no recollection of what this does, it appears to have been created for internal use. Even looking at the source code I am not sure what it does! Perhaps Dave is right, and this was created with the recorder, though I cannot see how that would have happened. In fact, I cannot see that this is actually used anywhere by Panorama 6. I would recommend removing this from your procedure.

Ok, on further study, I think this is used internally to type in the field name when you are editing a formula in the design sheet and choose a field from the Fields menu. This menu only appears in that situation. I don’t think this command has any other use. I was not able to record this with the recorder. I still recommend removing it from your code.

I searched the QNA archive and could not find any mention of this statement.

Thanks Jim, it’s odd but I remember reading about this somewhere and it helped save a problem although now it seems not to make any difference. I’ve removed the statement but just FYI here is a portion of the procedure where it is found:

;label places
Field "Class"
GroupUp
ColumnHelper
Field "Place"
Sequence "1 1"
RemoveSummaries "7"
FormulaFill ?(Place>3,zeroblank(0),Place)
First record

And another location:

;change first places <80 to 2nd
Field combo
FormulaFill ?(Place=1,?(Total < 80,"*","#"),"")
Propagate
Select «» = "*"
Field "Class"
GroupUp
ColumnHelper
Field "Place"
Sequence "2 1"
RemoveSummaries "7"
FormulaFill ?(Place>3,zeroblank(0),Place)
SelectAll