RE: Interesting question and debate on ddl tables with date fieldsthatwill not always have a value

One - I don't see this as too tricky:
if %nullind(termDate);
dsply 'employee is active';
else;
dsply 'employee was terminated ' + %char(termDate);
endIf;
or any more lines of code than
if termDate = MichelangelosBirthday;
dsply 'employee is active';
else;
dsply 'employee was terminated ' + %char(termDate);
endIf;

You do have some leg to stand on that if an incompetent programmer were to
check termDate without checking it's null indicator they can get into
trouble. For example if I do
termDate = date(); // set to current date
%nullind(termDate) = *on; // set termDate off as employee is active
dsply termDate; // even though null, it will still display today's date
But, who's to say that same programmer wouldn't figure that a date of
0001-01-01 or Michelangelo's Birthday or whatever wasn't a valid date?

Were you hoping that IBM had written the compiler so that if you tried
dsply termDate;
and if termDate was null then you'd get a messy MCH type message as if you
tried to dsply a variable that wasn't passed into the program and you
failed to check %addr on that?

I take it you also have an issue with
select termDate
into :termDate :termDateInd
from ....


Rob Berendt