RE: [C400-L] packed data

["Simon Coulter" <shc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Phil,

You wrote:
>My goals for doing this are so that I will become comfortable with C.
>Otherwise I'd just do this in RPG!

I think the only people who are truly comfortable with C are those who
learned it as their first serious programming language.  Anyone who has
used PL/1, COBOL, RPG, FORTRAN or anything else with fixed-length field
support and a wider range of numeric data types than simply integer and
floating point is never comfortable with C -- it's too limiting unless you
write or buy library functions to compensate for the languages natural
short-comings.  K&R did the programming community a serious disservice by
developing C.

>I figured out that I was incorrectly using STRCPY.

Good.

>I am intrigued with using embedded sql (not the SQL CLI api's).  Can you
>point me to any documentation for doing that in C?  I haven't been able to
>find ANY.  I use embedded sql in RPG all the time, and if I can use it
>successfully in both C and RPG that would be great.  And I wouldn't have
>to figure out how to use _Rlocate (which is what I'm trying to figure out
>now).

Since I am always guilty of telling people to RTFM I should at least be
able to find the appropriate FM, shouldn't I?  :-)

The manual you want is the SQL Programming with Host Languages manual.
Chapter 1 describes the environment and syntax.  Appendix D has example
programs.  This manual is hidden in the Disinformation Centre under the
Database and File Systems section.  Follow the Books (HTML and PDF format)
link.

Embedded SQL in C is very similar to RPG.  The SQL statements are the same
but other things are different due to the different semantics of each
language.  For example:

        o Use EXEC SQL instead of /EXEC SQL
        o C does not need END-EXEC statements because the semi-colon ends
multi-line statements
        o C requires host variables to be declared within a BEGIN DECLARE
block but RPG does not.

Regards,
Simon Coulter.
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