Is it possible to give scope defined value for handle? - PROGRESS 4GL

Question

Is it possible to give something like below?

&SCOPED-DEFINE Tablename "Customer".

DEFINE VARIABLE hFieldBufferHandle  AS HANDLE NO-UNDO.
DEFINE VARIABLE icount AS INTEGER NO-UNDO.

 hFieldBufferHandle = BUFFER Customer:handle.
 /* hFieldBufferHandle = BUFFER {&Tablename}:handle.     /*What I need..will be helpful if it has to be defined inside the loop*/ */

 do icount = 1 to hFieldBufferHandle:NUM-FIELDS:
    DISP buffer Customer:buffer-field (icount):label. 
 end.

Answer 1

As Tom says, you just create the buffer handle dynamically, since you currently just want the column labels:

def var hb as handle no-undo.
def var ic as int    no-undo.

create buffer hb for table 'customer'.

do ic = 1 to hb:num-fields:
   message hb:buffer-field( ic ):label.
end.

finally:
   delete object hb no-error.
end finally.

Also do not forget, if you create it, you generally need to delete it.

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Answer 2

Doing so would be meaningless because the actual value of the handle is not known until runtime.

But you don't need to use pre-processors to abstract that table name. You could make it totally dynamic at runtime like this:

define variable b as handle    no-undo.
define variable t as character no-undo.
define variable f as character no-undo.

t = "customer".  /* these could just as easily be parameters to a function/procedure/method */
f = "name".

create buffer b for table t no-error.

b:find-first( "", no-lock ) no-error.

message b:buffer-field( f ):buffer-value.