Re: %trim and *ZERO

*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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