× The internal search function is temporarily non-functional. The current search engine is no longer viable and we are researching alternatives.
As a stop gap measure, we are using Google's custom search engine service.
If you know of an easy to use, open source, search engine ... please contact support@midrange.com.


  1.  Home
  2. MIDRANGE-L
  3. September 2005

Re: Environment variables and IASP's on the I-Series


On 22/09/2005, at 10:06 AM, Jim Wiant wrote:


Firstly, I don't see a lot of reference about environment variables. Is
there any reason why they are not often used?
1) They are a Unix-y thing and therefore somewhat alien to OS/400. The only reason they exist is because so much Unix software expects them to be available so by supplying support for them IBM makes porting Unix applications to OS/400 easier. A side-effect is that the port looks less and less like it belongs on OS/400. PASE has the same effect but to a much larger degree.
2) OS/400 has (in my opinion) better alternatives such as data areas, user spaces, or even a database file. For things such as language sensitive objects (e.g., message files, panel groups, display files etc.) OS/400 *PRDDFN and *PRDLOD objects along with language libraries solve that problem. 


Secondly, I'm curious where the variables live. We utilize multiple
IASP's - and I'm trying to find out if each IASP gets it's own
environment space or if such variables are held in SysSpace.
They have nothing to do with an ASP (of any sort). I don't know where the *SYS environment variables live because IBM have provided a suitable suite of commands to view and change them so I haven't needed to search for them. However, the *JOB environment variables are only visible within a given job. That is you cannot see another job's environment variables using the IBM commands or APIs. For this reason I wrote my own SHWENVVAR command that will let you see another job's environment variables. The environment variables hang off a pointer in the job's Work Control Block. The specific location of the base pointer has shifted on various releases as too has the structure of the chain of pointers that hang off the base pointer. Once you find the appropriate pointer it is fairly trivial to locate and list the environment variables. You do need a system state program to do this. 

Regards,
Simon Coulter.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
   FlyByNight Software         AS/400 Technical Specialists

   http://www.flybynight.com.au/
   Phone: +61 3 9419 0175   Mobile: +61 0411 091 400        /"\
   Fax:   +61 3 9419 0175                                   \ /
                                                             X
                 ASCII Ribbon campaign against HTML E-Mail  / \
--------------------------------------------------------------------

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

This thread ...
Replies:
Follow On AppleNews
Return to Archive home page | Return to MIDRANGE.COM home page

This mailing list archive is Copyright 1997-2024 by midrange.com and David Gibbs as a compilation work. Use of the archive is restricted to research of a business or technical nature. Any other uses are prohibited. Full details are available on our policy page. If you have questions about this, please contact [javascript protected email address].

Operating expenses for this site are earned using the Amazon Associate program and Google Adsense.