Character to Numeric can it be cleaned up

I just went through this subject in the archive. 

After a hour or so of reading the "Brad S. and Hans B." show. About 
searching for stuff on the web and what wrong with your code battle. 

 PS. can all those emails that had nothing to do with subject be deleted? 
  
Also had tried to get to the discontinued "snippets" page. At least by the 
URL's posted. 

I was wondering if can I do this on v5r1 or am I stuck with 'C' functions 
and procedures (that do 50 times more than I need on this).   

Eval       CHAR1     =      %editc((%dec(CHAR1) + NUM1):'4') 

Just wanted to add a number to a character field with a number in it and 
no decimals in it's value. Result in character. 

Any suggestions 

Thanks 

Bill Hopkins