Re: Max length of a VARYING field

[Scott Klement <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Joe,

I don't need you to teach me RPG.  Thanks.  I expressed my opinion about 
how I'd like to see VARYING done in the future, because it would make my 
life easier.

Please stop wasting my time by dragging this thread out forever.

I don't see how listing "VARYING4" (or VARYING(4) or VARYING(*MAX4GB)) 
"adds overhead for everybody".

(I knew I should've just gone quiet the moment Joe Pluta got involved in 
this thread.  Always a mistake to get into any sort of a discussion with 
him.)


Joe Pluta wrote:
> What you say you want is to be able to pass a VARYING field by reference to
> another procedure.  You want the second procedure to be able to determine
> the length of the field by looking at the bytes preceding the varying field.
> The reason you need to do this is so that the procedure in another
> compilation unit can determine the length of the passed data.  As you point
> out, the BIFs that work with the VARYING field are designed to work within
> the current compilation unit.
>  
> I can see a couple of ways around this without resorting to an explicit
> index size, but by far the easiest is for you to pass two parameters to your
> procedures, just like we used to in the olden days.  Pass the address of the
> buffer and the length.  You have access to both in the calling procedure.
>
> And if you absolutely require the ability to pass a single parameter, then
> write one proxy procedure for each size of VARYING field.  Then have the
> proxy pass the address and length to the actual procedure.  I know it's not
> exactly what you want and it adds a second prototype (or even a third, if
> you ever required gigabyte fields), but I think it's better than imposing
> extra overhead on everybody for I would hope you agree is a relatively rare
> requirement.
>
> Joe