Re: More than 9 decimals in RPG/400

Jeffrey Young wrote:
> 
> Dan,
> RPG IV has the same feature but even better.
> The IGNDECERR(*YES) feature did not fix bad data, just ingored the field and 
> left whatever was in it previously.
> RPG IV has the FIXNBR keyword that allows you to specify *ZONED , 
> *INPUTPACKED or both and will actualy set the field value to ZERO if invalid 
> numeric found.
> 
> 

*INPUTPACKED sets the value to zero.  *ZONED actually does some fixup. 
Say a zoned field has the hex value
         x'F152FDDE'
then the system will replace any invalid zones with 'F' and any invalid
digits with 0 but will leave the rest as is. That value above would be
fixed like this:
         x'F1F2F0D0'
             x  x x
giving a value of -1200.

I agree that FIXNBR is better than IGNDECERR, since it doesn't leave the
bad data or propagate it to other fields.  But I still would not use it,
since it not only fixes up the bad data where you expect to have it, but
also silently fixes up all the other bad data caused by coding errors in
your programs, or by new files that you wouldn't expect to have bad
data.  (At least *ZONED is silent; *INPUTPACKED leaves a nice messy
trail in your joblog.)