General Procedures

A general procedure tells the application how to perform a specific task. Once a general procedure is defined, it must be specifically invoked by the application. By contrast, an event procedure remains idle until called upon to respond to events caused by the user, or triggered by the system

Why create general procedures? One reason is that several different event procedures might need the same actions performed. A good programming strategy is to put common statements in a separate procedure (a general procedure) and have your event procedures call it. This eliminates the need to duplicate code and also makes the application easier to maintain. Figure 8.1 illustrates the use of a general procedure.