Re: Simple Display file problem..

Jake,

Keep plugging on.

Ross' suggestion probably comes from a DDS background in which you would 
typically define a record format in your table with a different name than 
the file name to avoid the difficulties with the RPG compiler that you've 
noticed.  Traditional (BPCS not withstanding) naming for the record format 
name was file name with an R appended.  Summary:  Alter the file, not the 
program.

Alan's suggestion probably comes from a SQL background in which one lets 
SQL default the record format name to the same name as the file (probably 
because other platforms do not handle multiple record formats).  Then you 
work around it in RPG by a simple F spec keyword to rename the default 
record format name to one that is different.  Alan's example did follow 
the traditional R suffix.  Summary:  Alter the program, not the file.

A hybrid available on newer versions of DB2 (at least for the iseries) is 
the following enhancement, RCDFMT.  Example:

create table item_pf
(ItemNbr   char(23), 
 ItemDesc  char(50)) 
RCDFMT ITEM_PFR 

RCDFMT was added in V5R4 of i5/os.

Joe's right.  The best tool for the job.  And, what the hey, you'll be 
working on other's code anyway so it's not like you'll have no need to 
learn RPG I/O.

Rob Berendt