Displays text at a given line/column position in the current window.


DISPLAY text AT line, column [ ATTRIBUTES ( display-attributes ) ]
  1. text is any expression to be evaluated and displayed at the given position in the current window.
  2. line is an integer expression defining the line position in the current window.
  3. column is an integer expression defining the column position on the screen.
  4. display-attributes defines the display attributes for the text.


The DISPLAY AT instruction evaluates a string expression and displays the result at a given line and column in the current window. This instruction is typically used in text user interface (TUI) text-based applications to display static text on the screen such as messages or decoration lines with - (hyphen) or _(underscore) characters.

Use of the DISPLAY AT instruction is recommended only in TUI mode or GUI/traditional mode. To display data at a given place in a graphical form, use form fields and the DISPLAY BY NAME or DISPLAY TO instructions, or use interactive instructions with the UNBUFFERED mode to automatically display program variable data to form fields.

When using DISPLAY AT in GUI mode, the text will only be displayed if the current window contains no form, or contains a form defined with the SCREEN layout.

Table 1. Display-attributes supported by the DISPLAY AT statement
Attribute Description
BLACK, BLUE, CYAN, GREEN, MAGENTA, RED, WHITE, YELLOW The TTY color of the displayed text.
BOLD, DIM, INVISIBLE, NORMAL The TTY font attribute of the displayed text.
REVERSE, BLINK, UNDERLINE The TTY video attribute of the displayed text.