RE: Passing a Date field in a Prototype

>From: Jim Langston <jlangston@celsinc.com>
>Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 11:07:21 -0800
>
>As long as you're passing a date, and not character or numeric, it doesn't
>matter.
>
>Date fields are stored in an internal format that has nothing to do with
the
>date format you're displaying them in.  When you pass a date, you are
>passing the bytes stored in the internal format.
>
>This has been my take, and experience, on date fields anyway.

Jim, it's true that date fields are stored _in the database_ in some
4-byte form.  But the RPG compiler always sees dates in a readable
form like '2002-12-25' or '12/25/02' etc.

What makes the parameter passing work is the fact that the CONST keyword
was coded.  VALUE would also work.  These keywords cause the compiler
to do the required conversions for the parameters to get passed the way
the called procedure expects them.  This is the same thing that helps
CONST and VALUE numeric parameters get passed correctly; you can pass
say a zoned(5,2) to a packed(7,2).

Barbara Morris