XFA Specification
Chapter 24, Picture Clause Specification
Picture-Clause Building Blocks
903
Symbol
?
Affect on output formatting and input parsing
●
●
Input parsing: Match any one character, as in a wild-card
Output formatting: Format as a space
Input parsing: Match
zero
or more whitespace characters
a
Output formatting: Format as a space
Input parsing. Match
one
or more whitespace characters
a
Output formatting: Format as a space
*
●
●
+
●
●
a.The term whitespace characters means any [UNICODE] character classified as a break space. When input
parsing, any whitespace character is accepted, and when output formatting, a single space character is
emitted.
Picture Clause Literals
A picture clause may contain any combination of picture symbols and literal text, as illustrated in the
following examples. The outputs have been quoted, so that one can see the significant spaces — the
quotes are not actually part of the output.
Picture clause literals may be standard separators or text enclosed in matched single quotes. The
separators include the standard and full-width comma (
,
), dash (
-
), colon (
:
), slash (
/
), period (
.
) and
space ( ).
To embed a quote within a literal, specify two quote characters.
Output Formatting
When output formatting, literals are formatted verbatim into the output text. the following numeric
picture clause examples include several literals (single-quoted and default). The following examples use
double-underline to identify literals. The double underlines are not part of the picture clause expression.
Picture clause
'You owe' zz,zz9.99'!'
Input value
2157.5
50.6
Formatted result
"You owe 2,157.50!"
"You owe 50.60!"
Input Parsing
When input parsing, literals must match the input data verbatim, but never contribute to the resulting
text, as illustrated in the following examples.
Picture clause
'You owe' zz,zz9.99'!'
Input value
You owe 2,157.50!
You owe 50.60!
Formatted result
2157.50
50.60
Note:
Any alphabetic or punctuation character appearing within a picture clause that is not specified by
this document as a valid picture symbol and is not enclosed within quotes as a literal, is reserved for
future use as a potential picture symbol and should be considered a user error irrespective of the
current implementation behavior.