Re: Date Field Printing

Careful.

*NULL as figurative constant is supported for pointers. Pointers may be set
to *NULL and tested for *NULL.

Even a null capable field (ALWNUL in the DDS) may not be filled or checked
with *NULL. There is the null indicator which can be set and tested with
%NULLIND(fieldname).

One can also code ALWNUL for date fields and this works. A date field has to
hold a valid date all the time. So when you print or display a date field
whose null indicator is set, you will still see a valid date. When you write
a record with a date whose null indicator is set, you have to fill it with a
valid date.

Best regards

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Langston" <jlangston@conexfreight.com>
To: <RPG400-L@midrange.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2000 8:56 PM
Subject: Re: Date Field Printing


> There is actually no *NULL value for any field, it is something
> you can check for to see if the value should be considered null, but
> the field will always contain some data (even though it may be bad
> data, as in decimal data errors for numeric).
>
> Also, date fields are not yet *NULL capable.  So we don't even
> have something we can check to see if it's null or not.  But, regardless,
> checking for *LOVAL is exactly the same as checking for *NULL
> as far as I can tell, as long as *LOVAL is not an allowable entry.
>
> I have not actually used NULLs in RPG myself, but this is how I've
> heard they work.  Please correct me if I am wrong.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jim Langston
>
> Rob Berendt wrote:
>
> > I question 'the absence of a date is stored as 0001-01-01'.  Isn't
> > it stored as *null instead?  Does *null print this way?  Or is this
> > the effort of picking some arbitrary date to indicate the lack thereof?
> >
>
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