RE: Printing a report in CL

[Buck Calabro <buck.calabro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Richard wrote:

>I have a CL program that applies constraints 
>to files used in our application. Right now 
>my only options of displaying errors are sending
>messages and the job log. I was thinking of 
>creating a printer file and writing the error 
>messages to it, but I do not know if its even 
>possible to accomplish.

You can't use printer files in a CL program unless you go to some lengths to
create some commands that call an RPG program to do it for you.
>  
>Otherwise I was thinking of creating an RPG 
>program that would use QCMDEXC to apply the 
>constraint and the RPG program to retrieve errors
>and write them to a printer file. 

That's certainly one way.  Consider using the QCAPCMD API instead of
QCMDEXC.  You'll have better error control that way.

>Is there a better way to do this? Or is the 
>best way to end the program and display the 
>message, rather then running through the 
>whole program and retrieving a list of the errors?

There is always the option of using a display file in the CL program and
popping the messages up in a message subfile, although that would require an
interactive session.  This being the RPG list, I have no qualms about
recommending RPG to produce your error report.  You might consider something
as complex as having the CL program do all the work except printing:

PGM

/* apply constraints */

MsgLoop: RCVMSG

   /* If no error, we're done! */
   If ... (Goto QuitPgm)

   /* If first error, open error log */
   callprc ErrorLog ('OPEN' '')

   /* Add error to report */
   callprc ErrorLog ('PRINT' &MsgText)

   Goto MsgLoop

QuitPgm:
   /* If we wrote to the log, close it */
   If &errorhappened (callprc ErrorLog ('CLOSE' ''))

EndPgm

You'd write a fairly simple RPG program to take two parameters: "what to do"
and "what to print".  You could certainly expand on that (add
spacing/skipping, formatting, etc.)

Alan's suggestion about wrapping this in a service program is an excellent
one, and might be very valuable experience dealing with the ILE aspects of
RPG IV and CL.

>Thanks in advance
>Richard 

Hope this helped - I don't really understand the need for this particular
logging function, so I'm not sure if I answered the real question.  In my
experience, adding constraints to a file is done once, and I would like to
think that the programmer/DBA who's doing it would be able to read the
messages in the joblog...

Buck


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