The member list files are XML files that contain a list of items which each have a name and help attribute and may have an optional hasParen attribute.
Example:
<Member name="Add_Months" help="~Add_Months!(date, number)@ adds a number of months to a Date or Timestamp expression and normalizes the result"/>
The name attribute is simply the name of the function or value.
The help attribute contains the function prototype and description. This will be rendered as Html in the Quick Info window. Since it is difficult to read text that contains Html tags in an XML document, due to the need to use ‘<’ and ‘>’ instead of simply ‘<’ or ‘>’, we use special symbols to indicate the html tags.
| Symbol | HTML Tag | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| ~ | <b> | Start Bold text |
| ! | </b> | End Bold text |
| @ | <br/> | Line break |
| @@ | <br/><br/> |
Double Line break. This adds a blank line. Two consecutive line breaks have special significance for the Quick Paste function. This indicates the end of the parameter block to be inserted into the query. As a general rule, Quick Paste is only useful for Table Operators. To insert a blank line in other functions, add a space between the @ symbols – as in ‘@ @’. |
If the description needs to contain special characters such as ‘>’ or a double quote you must use the Html symbols such as ‘>’ or ‘"’ instead.
Note that the name of the function should always be included [as bold text] at the start of the help text unless it is a built-in value [e.g. Account] rather than a function.
The hasParen=“false” attribute is specified if the ‘function’ is really a system value, e.g., Account or Current_Date.
Example:
<Member name="Account" hasParen="false" help="The account string used to connect this session"/>
<Member name="Add_Months" help="~Add_Months!(date, number)@
adds a number of months to a Date or Timestamp expression and normalizes the result"/>
<Member name="NPath" help="~NPath!(ON { tblname | (query) } [AS alias]@
{ PARTITION BY expr [... , expr] | DIMENSION }
[ ORDER BY expr [... , expr] ]@
[ ... ON ... ]@
USING@
Mode([NON]Overlapping)@
Pattern('pattern')@
Symbols( expr oper expr AS symbol [... , expr oper expr AS symbol] )@
Result(expr [AS alias] [... , expr [AS alias]] ) )@@
Performs pattern matching over a sequence of rows from one or more inputs"/>