Re: %trim and *ZERO

[Charles Wilt <charles.wilt@xxxxxxxxx>]

*ZEROS is a figurative constant that always matches the length of whatever
it's compared/assigned to.

If %trim(TDESC1) is empty, ie. of length 0.  Then the string representation
of *ZEROS is also of length 0, so it makes sense that the statement is TRUE.

Charles

On Wed, Sep 9, 2020 at 1:01 PM Peter Dow <petercdow@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Here's an interesting one I did not know.
>
> In an RPGLE program I have a character field, defined as
>
> d TDESC1              s                 40a
>
> then an IF statement:
>
> IF %TRIM(TDESC1) <> *ZEROS;
>
> If TDESC1 is all blanks, is the above statement true or false?
>
> I would have thought an empty string, i.e. a varying length field with
> current length zero, would not be equal to zero, but when I debugged the
> program, it turns out it is.
>
> I'm not sure whether it's converting the empty string to a numeric
> value, or considering the *ZEROS as a varying length field too, and
> therefore comparing an empty string to an empty string.  Either way, it
> was not what I expected.  Live and learn!
>
> --
> *Peter Dow* /
> Dow Software Services, Inc.
> 909 793-9050
> petercdow@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:petercdow@xxxxxxxxx>
> pdow@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:pdow@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> /
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