Message Data

["Pantzopoulos, Mike" <mikepantzopoulos@xxxxxxxx>]

Title: Message Data

Hope this question is suitable for this list:

I've been building some commands  that are dependant on Validity Checking programs that do things like checking if a member exists. In trying to use  the messages associated with a command such as RTVMBRD I found CPF9815 which has the following defined:

SYSTEM:   CCSAUS  
 MESSAGE ID . . . . . . . . . :   CPF9815                                      
 MESSAGE FILE . . . . . . . . :   QCPFMSG                                      
   LIBRARY  . . . . . . . . . :     QSYS                                       
                                                                               
 MESSAGE . . . . :   MEMBER &5 FILE &2 IN LIBRARY &3 NOT FOUND.                
 CAUSE . . . . . :   THE MEMBER &5 IN FILE &2 IN LIBRARY &3 WAS NOT FOUND.  THE
   MEMBER SPECIFIED IN THE COMMAND WAS NOT FOUND. IF THE MEMBER NAME IS *N,    
   THERE ARE NO MEMBERS IN THE FILE.                                           
 RECOVERY  . . . :   ADD THE MEMBER (ADDLFM COMMAND OR ADDPFM COMMAND) AND TRY 
   THE REQUEST AGAIN.

DISPLAY FIELD DATA                     
                                                                      
 MESSAGE ID . . . . . . . . . :   CPF9815                             
 MESSAGE FILE . . . . . . . . :   QCPFMSG                             
   LIBRARY  . . . . . . . . . :     QSYS                              
                                                                      
                                                                      
                                     DECIMAL       VARY               
 FIELD     DATA TYPE     LENGTH     POSITIONS     LENGTH     DUMP     
  &1       *CHAR             0                               *NO      
  &2       *CHAR            10                               *NO      
  &3       *CHAR            10                               *NO      
  &4       *CHAR             0                               *NO      
  &5       *CHAR            10                               *NO      

As you will have noticed, the message only references message data fields &2, &3 and &5.

I'm a bit confused now. Why are fields &1 and &4 declared as zero length? I presume in this case I should still concatenate my message data into the 30 bytes of &5 &2 and &3.

TIA
Mike Pantzopoulos