RE: Field contents by reference?

Yes, in fact the data is coming from a UNIX system and we are looking at a 
text file so the field is actually 6 alpha!
It's time I learned about pointers. I'll work on it tonight.
Thanks,
Fran
At 08:05 AM 8/7/2001 -0700, you wrote:
>If you're concerned with only one data type, this isn't too bad.  You can do
>it with pointers, a data structure, and a based date field.
>
>The dspffd result should give you the offset of each field from the
>beginning of the record.  In your program you can use an externally defined
>data structure defined by the file in question or make the file program
>described and read it into a data structure for which you could allocate
>memory at runtime.
>
>Read a record.  Set a pointer to the address of the beginning of the data
>structure and then increment it to point to the offsets of the fields you're
>interested in.  The date field should be based on this pointer.  As you
>change the value of the address contained in the pointer, the based field
>will take on the appropriate values.
>
>I'll bet there's a slicker way to do it.  If you're interested in a variety
>of data types, you'll need a large number of based fields.
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Fran Denoncourt [mailto:BobNFran@escapees.com]
> > Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2001 4:07 AM
> > To: RPG400-L@midrange.com
> > Subject: Field contents by reference?
> >
> >
> > I have two files: The first is a data base file, XXX, with many date
> > fields. I would like to validate the contents of each
> > specific date fields.
> > The second file is an output file, XXXFIELDS, from a query
> > over a file
> > generated from DSPFFD. File XXXFIELDS has only four fields
> > (file name,
> > library, field name, field text). The query selects specific
> > date fields to
> > analyze. So, I would have XXX/Lib/Fld1/text; XXX/Lib/Fld2/text.....etc.
> > Since there will be several files to analyze - each with several date
> > fields - I wanted a more generic program with as little hardcoding as
> > possible. The intent was to read a record from XXX then get
> > all of the date
> > field names from XXXFIELDS retrieving and analyzing the
> > contents of each
> > date field before going on to the next XXX record.
> > Is there a way to get the contents of the date field using
> > the field name
> > retrieved from XXXFIELDS. There must be a way to reference the data.
> > Pointers? %ADDR?
> > Thanks again for your help.
> > Fran Denoncourt
> >
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