POSITION

Basic form

POSITION col.

Effect

The contents of the field col sets the output position (column) of the subsequent WRITE statement.

Notes

If the column defined by POSITION lies in the part of the line already written, it will be overwritten by any subsequent WRITE statement.
If you specify a position before column 1 or beyond the right-hand border of the page, subsequent WRITE statements will have no effect.
For vertical positioning (variable line), see SKIP TO LINE.

Example

The routine LINEOUTPUT has three input parameters - COLUMN, LENGTH and CHAR. Starting from COLUMN, it outputs a line comprising the character CHAR with the length LENGTH:

FORM LINEOUTPUT USING COLUMN LENGTH CHAR.
  DATA LINEPOS TYPE P.
  LINEPOS = COLUMN.
  DO LENGTH TIMES.
    POSITION LINEPOS. WRITE CHAR.
    ADD 1 TO LINEPOS.
  ENDDO.
ENDFORM.

If you call the above FORM with

PERFORM LINEOUTPUT USING 5 10 '='.

Output:
==========

WRITE ... AT, WRITE ... UNDER

Additional help