Re: Max length of a VARYING field

On 5/11/07, Keith Carpenter <carpcon@xxxxxxx> wrote:

Barbara Morris wrote:

> When RPG lifts the 64K restriction for strings, it will have to use a
> 4-byte prefix for varying fields longer than 64K. When that happens,
> you will want to find all the places where you have done this
> calculation, in case you increase the size of your fields to the point
> where they need the bigger prefix.
>

I'm all for the increased size, but...

I hope there will be an option to retain the 2-byte prefix for backward
compatibility. If not, this could become an infamous gotcha where if
someone compiles 1 module/program they end up having to fix a whole
series of programs.

or a new data type: varying4 vary4 varylarge verylarge ...

will it be 16MB large or teraspace large?

How would the compiler handle procedures that return large varying
strings? As I understand it:
d something_ToString...
d pi 32000a varying
d InSomething likeds(refSomething)
/free
return 'abc' ;
/end-free

this procedure will copy 32002 bytes back to the caller despite the
actual varying value being only 3 characters.

Would a procedure that returns a 16meg varying always copy 16meg back
to the caller?

thanks,

-Steve