Re: Bale, Dan

[boldt@xxxxxxxxxx]

Doug wrote:
>>Secondly, if you pass a value of say -0.0000000001 [or]
>>values greater than 9999999999999999999...
>
>I did qualify it as only working on numeric fields up to 30 digits and
>9 decimals, by which I meant no more than 21 significant digits to the
>left of the decimal or more than 9 decimal positions.  But I figured
>we all knew what that meant.  I have never yet had a business ap which
>needed larger values than that, although I suppose some have.

OK, maybe I'm being too picky, but you know what's going to
happen  with this procedure.  Sure, it's documented to only
work with (30,9) numeric values,  but a few months or a few
years later,  someone (maybe even you) will write some code
passing a value outside  the supported range.   A value too
big is fine since you get the exception right away. But you
might have a heck  of a time tracking  down a bug caused by
passing too small a value since the failure won't happen at
the procedure call.

>
>C'mon Hans, you're always griping that we ask you to give us %BIF's
>instead of coding our own subprocedures.  So I try and beat you to the
>punch and offer one, then you go and point out that it has limitations
>that a true %BIF wouldn't have.

Ouch!  It's those darned decimal variables that always give
us grief.

Actually, if you really want this "IsNegative" procedure to
work, I think if you make the parameter  a long float value
parameter, that should do the trick  since the  exact value
isn't really important anyways. You may lose some precision
while  passing  large  decimal values,  but the  sign would
always be preserved.

Cheers!  Hans

Hans Boldt, ILE RPG Development, IBM Toronto Lab, boldt@ca.ibm.com


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