Formula Editor Tips: Selecting the Right Variables Without Tripping Over Keywords 

Inforiver offers powerful Excel-like functionalities, including a robust formula editor designed to enhance your report-building capabilities. Whether you're a seasoned user familiar with Inforiver’s extensive range of formulas and functions or just getting started, the intuitive interface and comprehensive product documentation make it easy to quickly make progress.  

To help ensure seamless usage and minimize potential errors, this blog post provides essential information on avoiding specific keywords when naming variables in the formula editor. Understanding these best practices will help you optimize performance and streamline your report creation process.

Why keywords should be avoided?

Formula Functions in Inforiver are specific keywords with pre-defined meanings and functions within the system. These keywords/reserved words are essential for the internal operations of the formulas. Using them as names for custom variables or measures can cause conflicts, leading to compilation errors and unexpected behavior. 

Example 

In the example below, ‘IF,’ a keyword, is used as a variable name. Inforiver flags this as an error due to conflicts that arise during formula calculation. 

Note: By default, measures are referred to with braces [] (e.g., [2023 Actuals]) and are referenced with unique keys. While this can prevent errors, the best practice is to avoid naming your measures, too, using keywords. This eliminates unnecessary ambiguity. 

JavaScript Reserved words 

JavaScript reserved words should also be avoided when naming variables. 

Examples 

Below are other examples where variables are named after JavaScript keywords – ‘var’ and ‘try’: 

What are the keywords to avoid? 

Below is a sample list of Inforiver formulas and JavaScript keywords you should avoid using as variables in the formula editor: SUM, IF, AND, OR, NOT, VAR, TRUE, FALSE, NULL, TRY, CATCH, etc. 

This is not an exhaustive list. For the complete list, please refer to the product documentation and the list of JavaScript reserved words.  

Example 

Avoiding Inforiver keywords and JavaScript reserved words in the formula editor provides the correct output as below:

Best practices while naming variables  

• Use descriptive names: Choose unique and descriptive names for your variables and measures.  

• Leverage the suggestions: Inforiver displays reference and formula suggestions as and when you start typing in the formula editor. Use Ctrl + Space to manually open the suggestions. 

• Check for error prompts: Notice the error messages and prompts. These messages indicate syntax and logical errors. 

• Refer to documentation: You can always refer to the product documentation when in doubt.  

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