Significance of "~" symbol

[abhishek.shah]

Actually we are going through our codes for removal of hard-coded strings replacing them by our field variables.
PUT STREAM mail UNFORMATTED "objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Item _ " skip.
PUT STREAM mail UNFORMATTED "(~"http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusername~") = ~"mis@tspl.com~" " SKIP.

PUT STREAM mail UNFORMATTED "objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Item _ " skip.
PUT STREAM mail UNFORMATTED "(~"http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendpassword~") = ~"abcdtestpassword~" " SKIP.

Now I need to put up a function GetCodeMasterDesc("param1","param2") which returns password in string value in place of hard-coded ~"abcdtestpassword~".

Would appreciate if anyone can please help me with this. Also enlighten me with the "~" symbol used.
Thanks in advance.

 

[Rob Fitzpatrick]

You will find a reference to it in the OpenEdge help, listed under "~ (tilde)" (sub-section: Special character) in the index (at the top). It says:

~ Special character
The tilde (~) is an escape character that causes the AVM to read the following character literally. A tilde followed by three octal digits represents a single character. Use it as a lead-in to enter the special characters shown in Table 2. In a procedure, a tilde followed by something other than the items in Table 2 is ignored. For example, "~abc" is treated as "abc". (This may not work as expected when passing parameters to an include file.) The items in Table 2 are case sensitive.

 

[RealHeavyDude]

Outside of hard coded strings like "~some string~" the tilde symbol (just like the backslash on *nix) is used to concatenate code lines into one statement. For example pre-processor definitions may not be split across multiple lines unless you use the tilde symbol to tell the compiler that the code, although split across multiple lines, is a single statement.

In the past, by that I mean the good ole CHUI procedure editor days, the editor automatically did split lines of code that exceeded the 80 character limit into multiple lines, inserting a tilde symbol.

Heavy Regards, RealHeavyDude.

 

[Stefan]

Actually we are going through our codes for removal of hard-coded strings replacing them by our field variables.
PUT STREAM mail UNFORMATTED "objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Item _ " skip.
PUT STREAM mail UNFORMATTED "(~"http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusername~") = ~"mis@tspl.com~" " SKIP.

In the above cases you do not need to be using the tilde. You should probably be using the QUOTER function:

DEF VAR curl AS CHAR INIT "http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusername".
DEF VAR cpass AS CHAR INIT "mis@tspl.com".
PUT STREAM mail UNFORMATTED SUBSTITUTE( "&1 = &2", QUOTER( curl ), QUOTER( cpass ) ) SKIP.

Alternatively you can also use single quotes versus double quotes, but you are then relying on your input not having single quotes:

[COLOR=#333333]PUT STREAM mail UNFORMATTED '"http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusername") = "mis@tspl.com" ' SKIP.
[/COLOR]

So the first approach (quoter) is best.

 

[abhishek.shah]

Thank you all for the replies.
But I need to call a simple function in place of the string "abcdtestpassword". The function returns the string "abcdtestpassword" which it fetched from a database table. The problem has arise since the whole statement is within ~(tilde).
I'm looking for something like :
PUT STREAM mail UNFORMATTED "(~"http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendpassword~") = ~"" + func_CodeMasterDesc("str_code_name","str_email_id") + "~" " SKIP.

Can this work?

 

[abhishek.shah]

Problem solved!!
I used
PUT STREAM mail UNFORMATTED "(~"http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendpassword~") = " + "~"" + GetCodeMasterDesc("XX_EMAIL_ACK","mis@tspl.com") + "~"" SKIP.

Thanks everyone for the prompt replies.

 

[Stefan]

Thank you all for the replies.
But I need to call a simple function in place of the string "abcdtestpassword". The function returns the string "abcdtestpassword" which it fetched from a database table. The problem has arise since the whole statement is within ~(tilde).

So remove the problem (the tildes).

I'm looking for something like :
PUT STREAM mail UNFORMATTED "(~"http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendpassword~") = ~"" + func_CodeMasterDesc("str_code_name","str_email_id") + "~" " SKIP.

Can this work?

As stated before use a combination of substitute and quoter, no need to mess around with tildes. The tildes will also NOT catch any quotes returned by your function (allowing injection), whereas QUOTER will.

PUT STREAM mail UNFORMATTED SUBSTITUTE( "&1 = &2", QUOTER( "http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendpassword" ), QUOTER( func_CodeMasterDesc("str_code_name","str_email_id") ) SKIP.

Note that QUOTER is not completely safe, using a tilde with an octal value ~042 allows a double quote to be inserted (search for webspeed injection on psdn).