Re: Passing a Null Date to a Procedure

To me, that's more of a question of "whose job is it", and less of a question of performance. Determine which routine SHOULD be responsible for supplying the date... should the caller even know or care that there's a date involved? That sort of question is how I'd decide which routine retrieves the record.

Sorry, I don't know enough of your environment and application to give you a more direct answer.

But... options(*NULLIND) does let you pass the null indicator. :)


Doug Palme wrote:

Hey Scott,
A thought just hit me, what if I passed in the keys for the data in the original file, did a chain and then tested for the *NULLIND locally in the procedure?
The only difference is I am adding some overhead for the file lookup local to the procedure.

Thoughts?




From: Scott Klement <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: RPG programming on the IBM i / System i <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 12/31/2009 12:36 PM
Subject: Re: Passing a Null Date to a Procedure
Sent by: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx



Hi Doug,

You need to declare options(*NULLIND) on the prototype. When you do that, RPG will automatically pass the null indicator with the parameter.

However, bear in mind that it's not possible to declare a field on D-spec with a null indicator. That means parameters passed to this subprocedure have to be externally defined variables coming from null-capable PFs declared on an F-spec. That severely limits the reusability of your subprocedure. Personally I would give that a lot of thought before using options(*NULLIIND)



Doug Palme wrote:

Is there any way to define a date value in a procedure interface as

being

null capable?
I have checked the reference manual and so far have come up empty handed

on this.

We have a file that allows for null capable dates and I have to pass

this

value to a procedure for some processing, but it does not like the usage

of the %NULLIND parm.

*RNF0342 20 3 The parameter for %NULLIND is not valid; %NULLIND is

ignored

*RNF0342 20 259 008812 Parameter WENDDATE for %NULLIND is not null capable
%NULLIND is ignored.
Suggestions?

Douglas