Re: Dealing with very large blocks of character data

Folks:

I've got a problem where I need to analyze and manipulate very large blocks of character data.

This character data could be well in excess of 64k.

Since the limit for RPG character fields on 5.4 is 64k ... I can't use normal BIF's.

Upgrading to 6.1 isn't an option due to customer requirements (this was my first idea, but it got shot down).

My current thought is to use pointers and C functions to analyze the text in the space.

%alloc to create space and get a pointer

strstr in place of %scan(s)
strlen in place of %len(%trim(s))
strcat & %realloc in place of s1 + s2
strncpy in place of %subst

dealloc when I'm done with the space.

Obviously I would wrapper the C functions in procedures so I don't have to deal with the individual C api's directly.

I'm not supper happy with the idea of having to deal with this data using pointers and C api's ... Any suggestions on a different approach to handling these large character variables?

Thanks!

david
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