Re: New IBM idea - Named Parameters at Program and Procedure Calls

Il 27/02/2026 08:44, Birgitta Hauser ha scritto:

I have added a new IBM idea, to allow specifying Parameter Names (and
assigning the parameter values) at program/procedure calls (in the same way
as you can do it with SQL Stored Procedures, UDFs and UDTFs)
https://ideas.ibm.com/ideas/IBMI-I-4826

Please LIKE if you think it would be helpful/useful

Interesting idea, although one of the things I've always loved about our compiler's parameter management style is that it doesn't care about their names; what really matters is their nature and order. So I don't see it as easy to implement in contexts with legacy code or even a mix of legacy and free. Perhaps it should be limited to the fully free language, and even here I'm not sure. I wouldn't want to be constrained by the parameter name rather than its nature, even though today, when everyone programs with advanced tools like VS Code or RDi (right?), managing these aspects is much simpler.

What if the parameters are also used to pass messages from one program to another? Nothing would change, right?
I'm thinking of the case where pgm1 calls pgm2, passing it two parameters: one containing data to be used within pgm2's processing and the other as a sort of return code for the outcome of the processing.

something like
foopgm(parm1:rtncode);
if rtncode=*blanks;
//successful execution
elseif rtncode <> *blanks;
//something went wrong, let's log the error
endif;