Placeholders: Free format and fixed format

Business Central/NAV Developers Forum
1

Hello,

According to the development documentation both the percent and the pound symbol can be uses as a placeholder. But what is the difference?

This gives me the same output:

Message(‘Customer Name: #1#######################’, Customer.Name);
Message(‘Customer Name: %1’, Customer.Name);

Thanks in advance!

2

With the first one you limit the length of the string to the number of characters in “#1#######”, so in your case you can only put 25 characters in. Try it, with a name that is more than 25 characters you will get an error. The second one just substitutes %1 with the string.

You can’t see it in later versions, but in earlier versions, the #1##### would actually look like a textbox on the message box.

3

Thanks for your answer, DenSter.

Ok, I get it. You are right, it results in an error. But why would I want that?