RE: RPG - I'm not dead yet! -- RPG400-L

I'm not nearly as well versed in these things as you and Joe, but why would
one consider RPG (and here I'm assuming ILE RPG) to be an Achilles' Heel?
An Achilles' Heel is a weak point (usually a fatal one). Just because it's
tied so closely to the system (using, I think, the system's data management
routines among other things) shouldn't be cause for alarm. As Joe and JHHL,
among others, have pointed out it always helps to be multilingual. Makes me
wish I hadn't given up on C those many years ago.

RPG is not a fatal flaw - in my opinion - as long as Toronto keeps growing
it. Which they seem intent upon doing.

Jerry C. Adams
IBM i Programmer/Analyst
I think that the free-enterprise system is absolutely too important to be
left to the voluntary action of the market place. - Congressman Richard
Kelly (FL)
--
A&K Wholesale
Murfreesboro, TN
615-867-5070

-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of john e
Sent: Monday, July 11, 2011 9:21 AM
To: RPG programming on the IBM i / System i
Subject: Re: RPG - I'm not dead yet!

Joe,

Ok, i didn't know that. An array defined as 3u0 is the trick. Thanks!
In my - rather limited - experience with RPG-to-Java, if a pass a character
field to Java to a byte-array it gets translated, which is not correct as
you already stated. Apparently, the compiler "sees" it's a normal field (and
not a 3u0 field) and thus handles it as text.

Charles,
Ok, i didn't know that either, although, now you stated it, i knew or did
know (forgotten/biased?) that the JVM was implemented below SLIC, not above
which would be indeed very inefficient.

Maybe i'm a bit too harsh on OS/400, it is indeed - these days - a very
versatile platform.
Anyway, although i'm quite critical, i AM a fan of OS/400, the platform.
I'm just not a fan of RPG, and think it is the achillesheel of OS/400
development.

On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 3:50 PM, Joe Pluta
<joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

On 7/11/2011 8:14 AM, john e wrote:

And... i know it will never, ever, be fixed, because nobody will

complain.

Maybe you, me, a couple others on this thread, but the "audience"is just
tooo very small for IBM.
We just have to be thankful that there is something like RPG/Java
integration.

On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 3:10 PM, john e<whattssonn@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Joe,

I have one problem with RPG and Java integration however, a bit

off-topic,

but anyway. An alphanumeric field in RPG seems to be always translated

to a

byte-array, instead of a String. Then, RPG to Java support always

assumes

the field contains text, and thus always translates the contents to

UTF-16.

This is not correct. When just want to pass a field with bytes i can't

do

that, because it gets translated. The other way around would be better,
never translate it automatically, and when it contains text i can

(manually

by invoking a routine) translate ebcdic to utf-16 and pass that. This

one

example of integration, which is ok, but still causing headaches

because

of

the "different" (i.e. ecbdic etc) nature of it. This always translating
alpha fields to byte-arrays (not Strings but byte-arrays) is not

correct. It

seems like it wasn't well thought out.

This simply isn't true. If you want to pass untranslated data, pass it
as an array of 3u0. I do it all the time and it works perfectly. But
regardless, a character field is most definitely NOT a string! It is an
array of character data. You pass the data to Java, and then create a
string from those bytes, and that's Java's job. You can also do it in
your RPG program by calling the appropriate String method.

Personally, I think the integration of String and RPG CCSID is actually
very good.

Developing on the AS/400 and integrating with the rest of the world

always

seems problematic. With or without first-class support for JNI (which

RPG

has and is rather unique but.... doesn't work without hassles, again!)

And from my standpoint, the IBM i is the most open platform available
and talks to just about everybody. You can access it via web service or
ODBC or even direct calls to ILE through the Java toolbox. Few
platforms provide anything like the connectivity of the i.

Joe
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