The Utility function

In our previous Send_Message posting we mentioned that we had deprecated another well-known function, and I’m sure you can guess which one from the title of this post – Yep, we deprecated the Utility function!

One of the things we’ve tried to do in this release is to tidy up and standardize the interface between your Basic+ programs and the Presentation Server, providing a standard object-based model based on properties, methods and events.  The Utility function has always been been an exception to this however, essentially providing a shorthand way of executing what should be SYSTEM object methods, thereby breaking the paradigm.

In light of this the Utility function has been deprecated and it’s functionally exposed as properties and methods of the SYSTEM and FILESYSTEM objects instead.  Utility itself still works, but it is now a shell that maps to the two aforementioned objects (more of which we’ll cover later).

In case you’re interested here’s how the Utility services map to the SYSTEM and FILESYSTEM objects:

[EDIT: 19 Nov 15, Updated CHOOSEDIR and CHOOSEFILE methods to include FILESYSTEM]

(Disclaimer: This article is based on preliminary information and may be subject to change in the final release version of OpenInsight 10).