Re: text equation

[dhandy@xxxxxxxxxxx (Douglas Handy)]

Jim,

>It won't return a decimal number, only integers!!

The RETURN and EXIT expressions must be a whole number in the range
-2**15+1 to 2**15-1, but you probably don't want to use it this way.
When the value is other than 0, you end up with a severity 30 escape
message (which is where you are reading the whole number).

A better idea would be to replace the SAY with PUSH than leave the
EXIT or RETURN without an expression.

This will write the result to a data queue, where you can extract it
programmatically.  Note that if you just do PUSH I then the result is
trimmed to just the significant digits, including decimal values.

If you prefer a fixed format result on the dataq, then do something
like PUSH FORMAT(I,16,9)  which gives you 16 characters to the left of
the decimal and 9 decimal positions (e.g. a 25 digit result field with
9 decimals).  You would also need to add the statement NUMERIC DIGITS
25 prior to the INTERPRET statement in order to get more than the
default 9 digits of precision.

After calling the routine with PUSH, the result will now be on the
REXX external data queue. Then you can call QREXQ to read an entry
from the queue and return it to your program.  This program is
documented in chapter 9 of the REXX/400 Reference Manual (or at least
it is chapter 9 in the V3R7 softcopy).

Doug
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