# Ctitle

> [HTML Version](ctitle.htm)

_Revised March 2018_

This parameter must be a text string of any length to display as the column title/header; in addition it may optionally contain the column footer text. Note that the initial column display width is determined based on the largest string in either the title or any of the data items for that column. If you do not need a title for a particular column, set it to a blank (" "), otherwise you will end up with two adjacent ~ delimiters which will confuse the parser. You can embed line breaks in the header for a column using CR (i.e. chr(13)).

You may embed a tilde in the _ctitle_ string (so as to appear in the column heading when the control is displayed) by replacing it with the HTML-inspired encoding "%7e."

**Alignment**

Normally the column header text is aligned the same way as the data in the column is—i.e. based on the last _cformat_ field of the coldef parameter). You can now override this by starting the column header text with one of the three alignment characters: > (right), < (left), or | (center) followed by a space. For example:

COLDEF="1~20~> Right Title~<S~~"   \! text left aligned, header right

Without the space in the 2nd position of the title, the < character would have simply been treated as the start of the title text.

**Footer**

To define column footer text, append "::" to the title text, followed by the desired literal text. As with the column header, the text may start with an alignment character followed by a space. For example:

COLDEF="1~20~> Right Title::Footer~<S~~"     \! text left aligned, header right, footer default (left)

COLDEF="1~20~> Right Title::| Footer~<S~~"   \! text left aligned, header right, footer centered

Instead of literal footer text, you may also specify a special command (=SUM) to display the total of the column. See [Auto-Sum](auto-sum.htm.md).

Also note that in order for the footer to be visible, the XTR.showfooter must be set to 1. See [XTR.FOOTERSTYLE](xtr_footerstyle.htm.md) for details.

**History**

2023 June, A-Shell 6.5.1734:  _ctitle_ now recognizes HTML-style escaped characters, i.e. %xx where xx is value from 00-ff (hex). This is mainly a convenience for specifying hard breaks within a header or footer without having to resort to concatenating a chr(13) into the coldef string. For example, "1~20~Happy%0d~Hour~S~..." may be more convenient to code than "1~20~Happy"+chr(13)+"Hour~S~...". Note that a % not followed by two hex digits is treated as is; you can also use %% to indicate a literal %.

2018 February, A-Shell 6.5.1631:  Auto-Sum added.

A-Shell 5.1.1107 of 12 April 08:  New XTREE option to override the alignment of the column headers. Normally the column header text is aligned the same way as the data in the column is (i.e. based on the last _cformat_ field of the _coldef_ parameter). You can now override this by starting the column header text with one of the three alignment characters: **>** (right), **<** (left), or ** | ** (center) followed by a space. For example:

COLDEF="1~20~> Right Title~<S~~"   \! text left aligned, header right

Without the space in the 2nd position of the title, the < character would have simply been treated as the start of the title text.