Re: Assistance With Embedded SQL

Barbara Morris wrote:

Maybe none of your code will ever been needed for a VA RPG application, and maybe any VA RPG programmer who reads your recommendation will know that x'7D' isn't correct, and maybe your code will never need to be ported to a non-EBCDIC environment. But maybe it will; you might as well avoid using techniques that are known to be non-portable, especially when a completely portable mechanism exists.

Eh, I don't feel strongly either way about it - personally, I find using a constant to specify a quote is a little bit of overkill. Yes, there are places where it might make things more readable. But there are also places when it just makes things long. And then you have to deal with the inevitable cute short names like QT, QU or even worse, $Q (I always get a kick out of people who use an variant character in a name meant to provide an invariant solution).

I've always gotten around the issue by using a quote function. Instead of trying to add the quotes, I call a routine to do it. Instead of:

+ 'WHERE FIELD=' + QT + myField + QT + " AND ..."

I would use:

+ 'WHERE FIELD=' + quote(myField) + " AND ..."

The nice thing about this is that you can also include flags to check whether the field itself needs to be checked for embedded quotes, whether you need to trim, and so on. The only time I might not like this is if performance is a consideration; there is some overhead involved in returning a VARYING field.

In any case, if you ARE going to use a named constant for something like this, it's a prime candidate for a copy book. That way, it stays consistent throughout your site.

Joe