Oracle Forms Developer – Form Builder Reference, Volume 1

appears as if Form Builder adds a space in front of the number. (The minus sign is displayed.)
• To embed additional characters such as a hyphen (-) or a comma (,), surround the character with
double-quotes (").
• Embedded characters are separate from text item values and are not collated along with text item
values, even when the end user enters them.
NUMBER Examples
Format Mask Description
FM099"-"99"-"9999 Displays the social security number as formatted,
including hyphens, even if end user enters only nine
digits.To create a Social Security column, create an 11character
column, set to fixed length, with a format
mask of 099"-"99"-"9999. This mask will
accommodate Social Security numbers that begin with
zero, accepting 012-34-5678 or 012345678 (both
stored as 012345678).
99999PR Accepts -123; reformats as .
999MI Accepts -678; reformats as 678-.
9.999EEEE Displays as 1.00E+20.
How Forms handles length mismatches
If a runtime user enters a numeric string that exceeds the format mask specification, the value will be
rejected. For example:
Format Mask User enters Result
99.9 321.0 Invalid
99.9 21.01 Invalid
99.9 21.1 21.1
99.9 01.1 1.1
In contrast, if a numeric value fetched from the database exceeds the format mask specification for its
display field, the value is displayed, but truncated, with rounding, to fit the mask. (The item itself within
the Forms application retains its full value.) For example, if the database held the value 2.0666, and the
format mask was 99.9, the value displayed to the user would be 2.1. However, the value of the item
within the form would be the full 2.0666.
Dates
The following table describes valid format masks for dates.
Element Description
YYYY or SYYYY 4-digit year; "S" prefixes "BC" date with "-".
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