RE: Constants in RPG

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De : rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] De la part de Charles Wilt

* Global figurative constants
* Type relation = aunt
D gA C 'A'

myRelation = gA;

That's just plain silly.

Of course it is. Any advice on how to break the news to the person who wrote it?

I tend to tie the constant value to the field:
d RELATION_AUNT
d c 'A'
d RELATION_UNCLE
d c 'U'

I like that too. I did have the same, but when I saw my code :

TypeRelation = RELATION_AUNT;

I decided to reduce my constant name to AUNT to avoid repetition.

One could argue that a constant should never be local. As
that would allow you to have different definitions of it in
different procedures.
Which defeats the purpose of a constant.

We have one programmer who likes to make everything local where possible. In the case of a constant, it would be changed to global as soon as another procedure needed the same constant.

How about this for a rule ? :
All constants declared directly in the source are local.
All global constants must be in a copy book.

The idea being to use standard definitions wherever possible.

Thanks, Charles.