Display a REAL variable with thousands separator and its unit (Plant SCADA 2020 R2 8.30)

Frederic JULHIA please contact support as a first option. This is an open forum.

Here's an example of a cicode function that you can call from a graphics page. It takes an integer value and returns it as a formatted string with thousands separators:

STRING
FUNCTION BigFormat(REAL rValue, STRING sSep=",")
INT i;
INT iDiv;
INT iRem;
STRING sValue;
STRING sFormattedValue;

sValue = StrTrim(RealToStr(rValue, 10, 0));
iDiv = (StrLength(sValue)-1) / 3;
iRem = ((StrLength(sValue)-1) MOD 3) + 1;

sFormattedValue = StrLeft(sValue, iRem);

FOR i = 0 TO iDiv - 1 DO
sFormattedValue = sFormattedValue + sSep + StrMid(sValue, iRem + (i*3), 3);
END

RETURN sFormattedValue;
END

The default separator in this example is a comma, but you can override that if you specify it as the second argument. For your case you would call it like this from a graphics element:

BigFormat(MyTag, " ")

There's a similar function in the Citect Toolbox:  Comma-Delimited Values 

It is a little longer, but works with integers, floating-point numbers, positive, and negative values. However, you would have to edit one line of code to change the comma to a space:

sOutput = "," + sOutput;

I don't think I ever tested my code with variables having engineering units in the format (like ##########.### EU). Surprisingly, it seems to work since the function accepts the value as a STRING. When you pass a variable tag with EU in the format, and specify mode 1 (REAL number), it automatically gets converted to a string, like "123.45 RPM". However, if you use INT mode (0), it strips off the engineering units with the decimal places.

I noticed that BigFormat() doesn't seem to work with negative numbers, and even though you pass a REAL to it, it rounds to the nearest whole number. Of course, if you only need to display accumulators or other large, positive integers, that wouldn't be an issue.

Hi Eric,

You're right in your observations. My original function was specifically written for positive integers. My only change here was to accept the real tag from Frederic's screenshot. It also does not return the EU.

Is the Toolbox example non-blocking as well, so it can be used directly on graphics pages?

Cheers,
Patrick

Yes, it is meant to be called from graphics (foreground tasks).