Re: Max length of a VARYING field

On 5/14/07, Joe Pluta <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> From: Steve Richter
>
> how does it go? mascara on a donkey? the problem with using varying
> to build and XML stream is varying fields cannot be extended in size.
> You declare a varying(4) to be max 1000000 characters, but your
> general purpose RPG procedure that builds an XML stream from a
> database might exceed that size. Java strings dont have this
> restriction. Would be great if an RPG procedure could new up a Java
> StringBuilder object and then append characters to it. Is that doable
> now?

Actually, Java Strings have far more restrictions than RPG VARYING fields.
Strings are in fact immutable.

to add to an immutable string, just new up a new string and set your
reference to the new guy:
string xml = "<elem1/>" ;
xml = xml + "<elem2/> ;

You're thinking of the StringBuffer class, which allows appends but has
horrible performance for most string operations.

thanks, in C# it is StringBuilder. In C# if you set the initial
allocation right, performance that I have measured can be up to 3x
faster compared to a StringBuilder with no allocation.

-Steve