RE:

I don't know that I agree with the statement that "converting a parm to
hex is BETTER"  I'd say that it depends entirely on your specific
application.

However, the reason for passing it as hex is this:

  OS/400 will convert a numeric literal on the command line to a PACKED
   data type, 15 positions long with 5 decimal places.  (i.e. 15P 5)

By passing it as x'9F' instead of just 9, OS/400 doesnt think its a
numeric literal anymore.  So it simply passes a byte with a hex value
of 9F, which happens to be the value for a 1-character packed decimal
field that represents the number 9.

However, if you use the hex technique, you must be very careful to always
pass the full length of the variable, and you need to understand the way
packed numbers work.   

So, this technique is fine for a programmer thats testing a program,
provided that the program will eventually be getting its parameter from
another program.    However, in other circumstances, it'd be better to
either define a command interface for it, or to pass the parameter as
15P 5, so that the operating system can handle the translation for you.

Thats my 2 cents, anyway.  


On Thu, 23 Mar 2000, Joel Harvell wrote:

> Why would converting a parm to hex be better?  Maybe that's a dumb question
> but I really don't understand that.
> 
> jbh
> 

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