Re: Easy way to define a DS char subfield the same size as some numeric field? -- RPG400-L

I've got a standalone field defined as packed(3,0).
Is there an easy way to define a DS subfiled as char(3)?

That would be CHAR(2), actually. Packed fields are always digits+1/2bytes long. In this case, 2 bytes.

In other words, given any specific numeric field, how can a define a
corresponding character field large enough to hold the numeric data
without having to hardcode the subfield size?


     D char            ds
     D   packed                       3P 0

or

     D                 ds
     D   char
     D   packed                       3P 0 overlay(char)

In either case, the character field is automatically created as 2 byteslong, and you don't have to hard code the size.

The DS is used to send out an email message.

It would NOT make sense to do this in an E-mail message. E-mail messagesare text-only, so you'd want to convert the number to human-readable form.

For example, if you had the packed value -123, this would be stored inmemory in a packed field as x'123D'. That means that your 2 characterfield would be made up of 2 unprintable control characters. You wouldn'twant to put that in an e-mail message!

So I'm thinking to myself, "maybe he meant zoned decimal instead ofpacked?". OKay, in that case you'd define it this way:


     D                 ds
     D   char
     D   zoned                        3S 0 overlay(char)

That'd be closer. For example, if the zoned field had a value of 19, it'dbe stored in memory as x'F0F1F9'. If you tried to view it as text, it'dbe 019 which at least would be printable! However, it does have thatannoying leading zero. Now consider what happens if you make it anegative number, such as -123. the bytes are set to x'F1F2D3', whichwould appear on the screen as 12L, since x'D3' is the EBCDIC letter L.

Truly, you do NOT want to use a data structure for this. A data structurejust overlays two fields so that they have the same hex byte values. Inreality, you want to convert from the numeric field to a human-readable,nicely formatted, character field. Not just copy the bytes from one tothe other!

If there isn't an easy way to do what I want, I'll just get rid of theDS altogether and use eval + some bifs to build the message.

That's a MUCH MUCH MUCH better idea. EVAL and BIFs will make this mucheasier to write, and using %char() or %editc() you can format the numberany way you want.