Introduction to PowerBuilder

Naming Controls

When you place controls on a window, PowerBuilder automatically names them using standard prefixes and a number to uniquely identify them. The full list of controls and naming prefixes are as follows:

Control Type	Prefix
CommandButton	cb_
PictureButton	pb_
StaticText	st_
StaticHyperLink	Shl_
SingleLineEdit	sle_
EditMask	em_
MultiLineEdit	mle_
ListBox	lb_
TreeView	tv_
CheckBox	cbx_
RadioButton	rb_
DataWindow	dw_
DropDownListBox	ddlb_
DropDownPictureListBox	ddplb_
Picture	p_
PictureHyperLink	Phl_
Groupbox	gb_
Graph	gr_
OLE 2.0	ole_
Vertical scrollbar	vsb_
Horizontal scrollbar	hsb_
VerticalTrackbar	Vtb_
HorizontalTrackbar	Htb_
VerticalProgressbar	Vpb_
HorizontalProgressbar	Hpb_
RoundRectangle	rr_
Rectangle	r_
Oval	oval_
Line	ln_
ListView	lv_

The above list has the default prefixes. If you want to have different prefixes, you can change the defaults by selecting Design > Options and changing values in Prefixes 1 and in Prefixes 2. You can rename any of the controls, but it's a good idea to keep the standard prefixes so that it is easy to identify the type of object by looking at the control name in the script. Remember the control names within a window should be unique. That means, you can't have more than one control with the same name in a window. You can have a control with the same name in different windows. The names are case insensitive. While naming, you should follow PowerBuilder naming rules:

• Must start with a letter
• Can have up to 40 characters, but no spaces
• Are case insensitive (PART, Part, and part are identical)
• Can include any combination of letters, numbers, and  all these special characters:
• Dash
• Underscore
• $ Dollar sign
• # Number sign
• % Percent sign