Re: Acceptable characters in IFS file names

On 9/9/2017 7:08 AM, Birgitta Hauser wrote:

<snip>On the iSeries side of the fence  $  #  @  are valid characters to use
in names... </snip>
Which is not quite true.
It depends on the code page, for example on a German IBM I you cannot use
the @ sign in an Name. Instead we can use the § sign.

Yes, this is very important.  While most valid RPG source code characters stay the same from code page to code page, several (the $, # and @ mentioned above) do not.  We called them invariant and variant characters, respectively.  As another example, $ changed to £ (pound sign) on an AZERTY keyboard.  As our global presence expanded, we found it very difficult to maintain code with variant characters.

Back in the 80s we did a project to remove all those variant characters from the BPCS source code.  Note that this pertains to work field names in programs as well as database fields.  SSA made extensive use of $ and # in particular, and we had to remove all of them.  The going-in position was just to remove them, and then deal with any duplicates (FLD$A1 and FLD#A1 would both end up as FLDA1). We then had another project to clean up any accidentally obscene field names, but that's a different story.