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# Program Names

Most program files in OPEN SYSTEMS Accounting Software are named consistently. The first two letters are the application identifier defined in the previous section. The third and fourth (and sometimes fifth) letters identify a program type. The fifth, sixth and seventh (or sixth, seventh and eighth) characters make the name unique for the task. Each program name chain performs one menu task.

You can also use the sixth character of a program name (n) to differentiate individual items of a task chain. If the program is the first or only program of a program chain, leave off the identifier. Assign the identifier an increasing number or letter if greater than 9. The order in which you normally run the programs should dictate the order in which you number them. You can also use a descriptive identifier of one to three characters to identify programs in a chain.

Here are suggested standard names for program groups:

Character Position

AAACXn | File Maintenance (Add/Change) program
AADELn | Delete Transactions
AAENTn or AAENTxxx | Enter Transactions
AALSTn | List Master File program
AAMAINTn | Month-/Year-End Maintenance program
AAPRxn or AAPxxn | Print program
AAPSTn or AAPSTxxx | Post program
AASTMn | Statement Printing
AAVFYn or AAVER | Verify program

The letter x is a unique character that identifies the master file or the report associated with the current task. For example, in ARACC the fifth character stands for customer. In ARPRL the fifth character stands for labels.

| Make sure that the characters selected for this purpose do not create a conflict with a data file. The data file’s fifth, sixth, and seventh characters can include A–Z and 0–9. For example, if APVER is a program that verified new invoices for AP, and APVEx is a data file, company R would not be available to Accounts Payable. In this case use a different character combination, such as APVFY, to denote function. Be careful, too, of long company IDs. We recommend not using the first four letters of a data file when naming programs for an application.

Public programs are named differently from other programs. The standard method to label public programs is to add the extension.PUB. Public program names can be eight characters long plus the extension.

Public programs that provide F6 Maintenance functionality have the letters FM in the sixth and seventh or seventh and eighth characters of the file name. For example, a version of the ARACC program modified to provide F6 Maintenance functionality would become ARACCFM.PUB.