Initializing Variables in the Rules

If a variable is not set by a field and you’re going to compare its value to that of another variable to set a condition, you may want to set that variable to a starting or initial value. This is called “initialization”.

For example, assume we’re using a counter (%%OnePageDocs) to keep track of the number of one-page documents in an output. We want the counter set initially to 0 so we can increment it every time Enrichment encounters a one-page document. As the following figure shows, we set %%OnePageDocs to 0 in the START: section of the rules and increment it in the DOCUMENT: section. We set %%OnePageDocs to a new variable (%%Total1Pagers) in the FINISH: section of the rules, perhaps to add this information to a report.

START:
   %%OnePageDocs = 0
DOCUMENT:
   IF %%TOTAL_PAGES = 1 THEN
       %%OnePageDocs = %%OnePageDocs + 1
   ENDIF
FINISH:
   %%Total1Pagers = %%OnePageDocs