Re: RPGII to RPG IV

[Alan C <steelville@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

There's always some gotcha. I did a conversion of a bunch of programs 
some years back from S36 to RPGIII (on an as400), and that was even 
keeping the files internally described. Things like a field name can be 
in a record format and a bunch of different DS's at the same time. If 
it's in two DS's at least it'll stop the compile. You can get subfields 
of another field that overlap other subfields fields, and sometimes a 
field overlapped part of two fields!  (Whoever would've thought?) 

Another thing once was where for some reason there were strings of nulls 
in some wierd place embedded in an externally described file, had to 
have been put there by some RPG program(s) using the file as 
program-described or something.

In other words, if a bunch of programs are accessing that same file, you 
might get a rude surprise if/when you try to convert to externally 
described files.

If the company is still pure RPG-II and pgm-described files, if this is 
a first time around, I'd probably "play it safe" and keep the file as 
program-described. Meaning if the programmers weren't kept to some tight 
consistent standard, there might be some surprises.

Alan