The advance statement moves forward, field by field, to the specified field, executing logic in fields' preproc and postproc events as it proceeds. It acts as though the Enter key were pressed repeatedly until either the specified field appears or one of the procedures executed during the advance goes to a different field.

The optional field_name is either the name of a field or is a string variable specifying the name of the field. If the field_name is not specified, the program attempts to advance to the end of the level.

The target field can be located in any record at the same level as the current field, but it cannot be located at a different level. The field must be later on the path than the current field, meaning that it is a field that has not yet been entered. If the field has already been entered, an error message will be displayed during data entry. If you do not know whether the field is earlier in the data path, use the move statement.

Note that the advance statement behaves differently from the skip statement, moving over some number of fields, rather than skipping past the fields.

If you want to conditionally execute logic based on whether or not the program is advancing, the inadvance function indicates if an advance is in progress.

See also: InAdvance Function, Ask Statement, Move Statement, NoInput Statement, Reenter Statement, Skip Statement