RE: GetIfsAttr - No such path or directory

Hi Bob,

> Great, so I write to scott asking if he knew of a way to retrieve the object
> creation date for an IFS file and he says "Use Qp0lGetAttr but it's a $#@$&
> of an API" and then goes and writes an article about it.  <vbg>

You aren't the only person who has asked me that question. I get that
question probably 3 times a month, and it was frustrating that I didn't
have any sample code or anything to point people to.

So I wrote one.



> Well I just paid the $29 bucks to read that article at it is a bit
> misleading if you don't know the background of these kinds of APIS.

How so?  I'd be very happy to improve my work based on your suggestions.



> Note that Scott (who is a great mind and probable has forgotten more more
> about the IFS that you or I will ever know) uses the following /COPY
> statement:
>
> /copy QP0LSTDI_H

At the bottom of the article, it says the following:

   You can download the entire sample program that demonstrates the
   techniques above, including my /COPY members with all of the constants,
   prototypes, and data structure templates from the following link:
   (then provides the link)

You see, I have a limited amount of space for each newsletter item.
Sometimes I'm not able to include the entire code in the article itself,
so I show snippets of the pieces that I'm explaining, and then provide the
sample program in it's entirety for download as a .ZIP file.


> I don't know where that /COPY located as it is not listed in the article,
> but then later he calls the qp0lGetAttr API as follows:
[SNIP]
> But where is MYPATH parameter defined? I don't see that in the article
> either. MYPath is NOT a simple '/home/cozzi/myifsfile.txt' thing. It is a
> data structure. That data structure is defined as follows:

If you download the sample code, everything is included.  (Even the data
structure.)

> I've set up the rest of the subfields for you so that should work on most
> North American AS/400 installs. If not, then you need to grab the CCSID,
> language ID and Country Codes.

Actually, if you set them to all x'00', the system will use the defaults
for your job.  That way you don't have to hard-code the language id,
CCSID, etc or write complex routines to retrieve them.

> Or as I always like so say, Use the RPG xTools procedure ifsGetCrtDate() to
> easily retrieve the information you need into a nice little data structure.
> All you'd have to do is the following:

If you already have a utility to do this, why are you downloading mine?