Global Variable Scope: Bug or Feature? (and a tip)

I just ran into a situation where I declared a global array, populated it in the Detail section of the report, but when I tried to reference it in a different formula field in the Report Footer section it was empty!

Is this a bug, or a feature?

FWIW, changing the declarations to Shared fixed this issue. This was the only change to the code.

Here's a tip, which I used to verify that the array was in fact getting cleared when referenced in the Report Footer section:

In the Detail section formula field that populated the array, I added the following (Basic syntax)

dim debug as number
global dbgcnt as number

dbgcnt = dbgcnt + 1
if dbgcnt > 100 then
  debug = debug / debug
end if

This causes a divide by zero error on the 101st detail record, which brings up the formula editor and displays the values of all of the variables. I could see the arrays were populated.

I then commented the above out, and in the Report Footer section, I added

dim debug as number
debug = debug / debug

To see that the arrays had no data in them.

I find this to be a great way to debug a report. Hope you like it! 😊

HTH,

Carl