Re: RPGIV inconsistancies.

[Hans Boldt <boldt@xxxxxxxxxx>]

David wrote:
>Can anyone tell me why %subst is not treated consistantly?  %subst only >works
with contiguous storage and it seems should be allowed anywhere that >the first
argument could be used.  For example, the following works:
>
>EVAL %subst(fld: 1: 1) = 'A'
>
>Why can't I use %subst(fld: 1: 1) for a parm that is passed by reference?
>Isn't that functionally equivalent?  It seems like this could work.  I am
>asking because if I pass a *varsize field by reference I cannot get the
>length unless I pass the length as a separate parameter.

Hi David!  Well, most of us here are back again after an
extra long weekend.

It would, of course, be easy to allow %SUBST as a reference
parameter.  But, it looks like you want the length to be
passed as well.  You want to be able to pass, say, a 1 char
substring where the procedure expects a char 10 and have the
procedure see or change only the 1 char?  Is that correct?
That would not be easy to implement.

I suppose what we really need is some improvement to
operational descriptors, but I haven't seen any hint that
Rochester is doing anything to help.

Or if you're on V4R2, you could try the character varying
data type.

Cheers!  Hans

Hans Boldt, ILE RPG Development, IBM Toronto Lab, boldt@ca.ibm.com
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