Simple Sort in FOCUS
There are a number of ways that you can control the sort order in your report. The first
is the BY clause:
00001 TABLE FILE AAFILE
00002 PRINT
00003
AA002 as ID_NUMBER
00004
AA003
00005 BY AA003 NOPRINT
00006 END
This will sort the report by NAME. NOPRINT is used in line 5 because the NAME field has
already been specified in line 4. Without the NOPRINT statement, the report would print
NAME in the first column, since that is the sort field. It would also display NAME in the
third column because we have specified that we want to see that field (in line 4).
Reverse Order Sort
By default, the sort is from low to high values. That is, records with low values in the
specified sort field will be listed first.
You can change this to sort in the reverse order, from high to low, by using the
HIGHEST option:
00001 TABLE FILE AAFILE
00002 PRINT AA006
00003
AA002
00004
00005 BY HIGHEST AA006 NOPRINT
00006 END
This report will list the names in reverse order with those names that begin with letters
from the end of the alphabet being printed first.
Defining Your Own Sort Order
You can also use the BY...ROWS phrase to define your own sort order. For example:
00001 TABLE FILE STERM
00002 PRINT
00003
ID_NUMBER
00004
NAME
00005 BY COLLEGE1 ROWS BUSINESS OVER SCAT OVER 'ARTS & SCIENCES'
00006 OVER MEDICINE OVER EDUCATION
00007 END
The order of the sort in the above example will follow the order of the COLLEGE1 values
as they have been specified in the OVER portion of the command (in lines 5 and 6). In
the example, Business records will print first followed by SCAT, Arts & Sciences,
Medicine, and Education. Note that records with values that are not specified will not be
included in the report. Thus, Music records will be ignored. Also note that a single quote
is needed when the value contains a space as in Arts & Sciences.
Displaying the Highest n Records
You can also use this technique to display only the highest 10 or lowest 20 records
based on the specified sort field value. For example:
00001 TABLE FILE MARIST
00002 PRINT
00003
STU_ID
00004
NAME
00005 BY HIGHEST 100 TOTAL_DUE
00006 END
This will list the 100 records with the highest values in the numeric field, TOTAL_DUE.
This will only work with numeric fields.
Group Data
You can also group data based on numeric fields. For example:
00001 TABLE FILE STERM
00002 PRINT
00003
ID_NUMBER
00004
NAME
00005 BY TOTAL_DUE IN-GROUPS-OF 1000
00006 END
The report would look something like:
TOTAL_DUE
--------1000
2000
... etc ...
ID_NUMBER
--------123456789
222222222
221122112
333333331
NAME
------------------SMITH, GREG
JONES, GREG
JONES, TOM
SKY, LUKE
Nested Sorts
You can have "nested" sorts. For example, to sort a listing by college and then by
department within college and then by name with in department, the following would
suffice:
00001
00002
00003
00004
00005
00006
00007
TABLE FILE MARIST
PRINT
STU_ID
NAME
BY COLLEGE1 PAGE-BREAK
BY DEPARTMENT LINE-BREAK
BY NAME NOPRINT
00008 END
List the top-most sort field first. In this case, we want the list to be sorted by COLLEGE1
first. PAGE-BREAK will create a new page each time the value of COLLEGE1 changes in
the list. Within each college, DEPARTMENT will sort the list with a blank line between the
sort groups. Finally, the report will list the students in alphabetic order within each
department.