Institutional Computing Services
Frequently Asked Questions
FOCUS
A: FOCUS has an environmental parameter, EMPTYREPORT, that controls whether a report prints when zero records have been retrieved. In Release 6.8 you may use the SET command to adjust the value:
SET EMPTYREPORT = ON (print empty reports)or
SET EMPTYREPORT = OFF (do not print empty reports)DEFAULT: In Release 6.8 the default is OFF (changed from prior releases), which is why your empty reports have not been printing. It seems reasonable that if you always want to print empty reports, you could include this statement in your FOCUS setup file (prouser.fex) so it automatically executes when you enter a FOCUS session.
INDIVIDUAL REPORTS: Obviously, not printing empty reports saves paper (including banner pages, trailing blank pages, etc.), so you may not want to change your FOCUS setup to always print empty reports for every FOCUS program. If you want to specify that an individual report in a particular FOCUS program will (or won't) print even if zero records are retrieved, you may do so by including one of the following statements within your TABLE request:
ON TABLE SET EMPTYREPORT ON
(print this report, even if empty)
or
ON TABLE SET EMPTYREPORT OFF
(do not print this report if empty)
[This information was taken from the IBI publication describing new features of FOCUS Release 6.8.]
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