b983a6da57
The same plain-backtick "See sample: \`x.good.al\`." form fixed on al-methods-limited-during-write-transactions (PR #161) turned up repo-wide on 15 more of this PR's articles - Knowledge-Retrieval.ps1 requires the markdown-link form to associate a sample with its article. All 16 fixed; the four local validators (frontmatter, knowledge-index, knowledge-retrieval, review-fixtures, skill-index) pass.
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Intrinsic AL function calls use modern casing, not legacy ALL-CAPS
Contributions welcome — open a PR to refine or extend this article.
Description
AL is case-insensitive, so MESSAGE(...), ERROR(...), CONFIRM(...), and STRSUBSTNO(...) compile and run identically to Message(...), Error(...), Confirm(...), and StrSubstNo(...). Modern AL — Microsoft's own current samples and current reference codebases — writes intrinsic/built-in function calls in the casing Microsoft assigns to the function's declared name, typically PascalCase. This is a codebase-convention claim, not a claim about what the VS Code formatter enforces: the formatter normalizes particular syntax but is not a mechanism for recasing every intrinsic function call, so do not cite formatter behavior as the reason to follow this convention. ALL-CAPS calls are a holdover from classic C/AL and signal code that has not been modernized, even though it compiles and runs correctly. Reserved keywords such as if, begin, and for are a separate, already-tooled concern; intrinsic function names are identifiers, not keywords, so that tooling does not catch ALL-CAPS intrinsic function calls.
Best Practice
Call intrinsic functions in their modern, PascalCase form.
See sample: intrinsic-al-functions-must-use-modern-casing.good.al.
Anti Pattern
ALL-CAPS intrinsic function calls trip no compiler error, but they are a reliable signal that a code block was copied from old C/AL material or outdated training content rather than written against current AL conventions.
See sample: intrinsic-al-functions-must-use-modern-casing.bad.al.