RE: How to use *OMIT and or *NOPASS

What is driving the use of each of the optional (er, omittable) parameters?
I ask because one option is to create wrapper procedures around S#ChkUsr. Um, what's the S# for? *shudder*

Is there some kind of logical grouping to the optional parameters? Like, does BnkID always come with a FedID? Is there a particular situation that you'd only send 2 out of the 5 parameters? Is there a name to that situation? If so, why not create a wrapper for it? I feel that calling a well-named procedure is much less confusing than calling one procedure with a series of omittable parameters for me to determine if I should pass a value or *omit and not understanding the consequence of passing a value in place of *omit.

-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Smith, Mike
Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2009 1:51 PM
To: RPG programming on the IBM i / System i
Subject: How to use *OMIT and or *NOPASS

I am trying to create a procedure that receives up to 7 parmeters. The
first 2 will always be passed. For the last 5 parms I want to be able
to pass only 1 in any position

So if I have a PR like
P S#CHKUSR B Export
D S#CHKUSR PI N
D UserProfile 10A
D AppSys 5A
D EcisSsn 1A OPTIONS(*OMIT)
D ThrdSsn 1A OPTIONS(*OMIT)
D PrSsn 1A OPTIONS(*OMIT)
D BnkID 1A OPTIONS(*OMIT)
D FedId 1A OPTIONS(*OMIT)


C eval retfield = S#chkusr(USR:DEPT:F1
C :*OMIT:*OMIT:*OMIT:*OMIT)

I might only want to pass BnkID or in my example I only want to pass
ECISSSN.

I have tried combinations of *OMIT, and *NOPASS but I keep getting
pointer not set.
Maybe I can't use *OMIT this way. At any rate, I want to understand it
better.

Thanks
Mike