RE: Numeric to character conversion in RPGIII

RPGIII. numeric conversion to character with zero-suppression.



Well, FIRST. RPGIII DID support external calls. SO, you could call a nice
program to handle the task. (that program could be ANYTHING that DOES
support the native,easy approach that had been suggested.) Nice, simple,
clean, clear.. but does not adhere to RPGIII throughout.



But SECOND, if they are BENT on not bending the RPGIII requirement, and the
code absolutely positively HAS to be RPGIII, you can use something like
this..

---

Make a 1 record, non-keyed disk workfile in QTEMP, and reference it in your
program as an internally described file, say 80 bytes. enough to handle any
editing you'd like.



It involved writing to a (direct) update disk workfile . always record# 1.
This was done with an EXCPT/update output operation. The numeric field had
it's edit code/word applied. 'Z' for zero-suppression, 'Y' for date, fancy
editwords for telephone number or social-security-number, etc. Nice thing is
that it includes decimals, commas, negative signs - depending on which edit
work you use. For instance:

F WORKFILE UF F 80 DISK



C EXCPT BALFMT

.

OWORKFILE E BALFMT

O BALAMT Z



Then they would turn around and read (CHAIN to record#1) from the file. and
move the input buffer (which held the edited bytes put out by the previous
EXCPT). Ta Daaa. The 'edited' field is moved into a character field.

C 1 CHAIN WORKFILE

C MOVEL WRKBUF BALCHR



Now, if you don't like that there is a slow disk workfile needed, you can
use the SPECIAL file (another seldom used but valid RPGIII syntax). Change
the CHAIN to a READ, and you are done. Your little SPECIAL file-handling
program can also be RPGIII syntax. It does basically NOTHING. Just allows
the same buffer that was previously written to be used for input on the
READ. No disk activity needed, and it improves by a factor of 1000-10000.
Fast, but still ugly ;)

F WORKFILE UF F 80 SPECIAL

I'm sure these clever folks know some RPGIII syntax way of doing it. But,
just thought you'd get a kick out of it.



Another technique was to call a CL program, passing in a number to
zero-suppress. Then running a RTVMSGD with a specially-defined message to
get back the zero-suppressed result. Calls an external program, but
everything is still 100% Old/S38 syntax.



I am SOOO embarrassed I remembered these ;)