changedictionaryvalues(
DICTIONARY
,
KEY
,
VALUE
)

The changedictionaryvalues( function changes one or more values in a dictionary (see Data Dictionaries).


Parameters

This function has three parameters:

dictionary – is the name of the field or variable that contains the dictionary (must contain binary data).

key – name of an entry (this must be a text value). You can have more than one key parameter, as long as each key is accompanied by an associated value parameter.

value – The new value to be paired with the key.


Description

The changedictionaryvalues( function takes an existing collection of values and modifies one or more key/value pairs. This example creates a new dictionary collection containing a US mailing address and stores it in a variable named mailto.

fileglobal mailto
mailto=initializedictionary("Address","3987 Olive","City","Tustin","State","CA","Zip","92841")

Later you could use the changedictionaryvalues( function to modify one or more of the values in the dictionary. (In this example the modified dictionary is being stored right back into the mailto variable, but it could be stored in a different field or variable.)

mailto=changedictionaryvalues(mailto,"Address","3987 Olive Court","Zip","92841-8437")

You can see the changed values by using the dumpdictionaryquoted( function.

dumpdictionaryquoted(mailto)

Here is the result:

Zip="92841-8437"
Address="3987 Olive Court"
City="Tustin"
State="CA"

The function can also add new key/value pairs to the dictionary.

mailto=changedictionaryvalues(mailto,"Country","United States","State Name","California")

Two new values have been added to the dictionary collection.

Zip="92841-8437"
Address="3987 Olive Court"
City="Tustin"
State="CA"
Country="United States"
State Name="California"

Dictionary values are not restricted to text – you can use any type of data that Panorama supports, including numbers, dates, and binary data. This example adds a “next checkup” date to the dictionary.

mailto=changedictionaryvalues(mailto,"Next Checkup",date("2/17/2014")

Advanced Note: If you used dictionaries in a previous version of Panorama (6.0 or earlier), the internal format used for dictionary collections has changed. The older version supported only MacOSRoman encoded text (no Unicode text), and did not support non-text values. The new format lifts both of these restrictions. The old format is still supported in “read-only” mode – the data in an old format dictionary can still be accessed, but will automatically be converted to the new format if any changes are made.


Error Messages

Changedictionaryvalues( function is missing a value parameter. – This function requires an odd number of parameters. If an even number of parameters is supplied, this error will occur.


See Also


History

VersionStatusNotes
10.0UpdatedCarried over from Panorama 6.0, but now allows more than one key/value pair to be changed at a time. This operation is now available as a function that can be used a formula -- it was previously only available as the setdictionaryvalue statement (which still works for compatibility with older databases).