FIRST PAGE HEADER

Defines the printing commands for the first page of a report.

This control block specifies the action that the runtime system takes before it begins processing the first input record. You can use it, for example, to specify what appears near the top of the first page of output from the report.

Because the runtime system executes the FIRST PAGE HEADER control block before generating any output, you can use this control block to initialize variables that you use in the FORMAT section.

If a report driver includes START REPORT and FINISH REPORT statements, but no data records are passed to the report, this control block is not executed. That is, unless the report executes an OUTPUT TO REPORT statement that passes at least one input record to the report, neither the FIRST PAGE HEADER control block nor any other control block is executed.

As its name implies, you can also use a FIRST PAGE HEADER control block to produce a title page as well as column headings. On the first page of a report, this control block overrides any PAGE HEADER control block. That is, if both a FIRST PAGE HEADER and a PAGE HEADER control block exist, output from the first appears at the beginning of the first page, and output from the second begins all subsequent pages.

The TOP MARGIN (set in the OUTPUT section) determines how close the header appears to the top of the page.

Consider the following notes when programming the FIRST PAGE HEADER control block:

  1. You cannot include a SKIP integer LINES statement inside a loop within this control block.
  2. The NEED statement is not valid within this control block.
  3. If you use an IF…THEN…ELSE statement within this control block, the number of lines displayed by any PRINT statements following the THEN keyword must be equal to the number of lines displayed by any PRINT statements following the ELSE keyword.
  4. If you use a CASE, FOR, or WHILE statement that contains a PRINT statement within this control block, you must terminate the PRINT statement with a semicolon ( ; ). The semicolon suppresses any LINEFEED characters in the loop, keeping the number of lines in the header constant from page to page.
  5. You cannot use a PRINT filename statement to read and display text from a file within this control block

Corresponding restrictions also apply to CASE, FOR, IF, NEED, SKIP, PRINT, and WHILE statements in PAGE HEADER and PAGE TRAILER control blocks.