Re: Need Help On a Problem

[Scott Klement <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Mike,

> I have this program that was worked flawlessly for a long time.

You got lucky. :)


>  /free
>   Cmd = 'SBMJOB CMD(CALL PGM(CUGPRCSMON) PARM(''' + DataQueue + ''')) ' +
>          'JOB(PROCESSMON) JOBD(MONPDFJOBD) JOBQ(' + SBMJOBQ + ')';
>

When you submit a command in this manner, you have to understand that the
entire command string will be assembled into one string, that string will
be copied to the new job and then executed as if it had been typed at the
command-line.  This means:

1) Quotes must be doubled up.
2) Parameters over 32-bytes long have to be treated in a special way.
3) Numeric parameters will be treated as 15,5
4) Special literals like x'010203' will be converted to hex bytes and
passed.

And so on.

This is ONLY a problem when working with either QCMDEXC, SBMJOB, or the
command-line.  It is not a concern when calling another program directly.

> D  SplfNumber                    8B 0
>     Spool File Number

I could go into a whole diatribe about why you should never use the 'B'
data type, but it's irrelevant to the problem you're experiencing, so I'll
spare you.

But what you do have to consider is what that 'B' means.  It means that
your number will be stored according to it's binary representation.  If
you pass the decimal number 125, then the physical bits of storage will be
01111101, which is the binary representation of that number.

So you have to ask yourself, how will the command-line interpret that
byte?  It will try to interpret it as a character typed on the command
line... which brings me to the next point:

> Note the " ' " in the middle of the parm. Like I said this has worked
> flawlessly for almost 2 years, what is the corralation between the 125
> and the single quote?

That correlation is called "EBCDIC."  Look up 125 on your EBCDIC chart...

> Could I define 'SplfNumber' as alpha and not have a problem when my
> called program is recieving the exact same defined DS?

Bingo.  That would solve this problem.  There are other problems,
however... for one, since your parm is > 32 bytes long, there's the chance
for garbage characters appearing at the end of the data structure.  You
also should make certain that everything else in the DS can be safely
parsed by the command-line.

Personally, I'd avoid all of that and use a different method to pass the
data to the other application.