Re: Assigning a value to a DDS varlen defined field

[Charles Wilt <charles.wilt@xxxxxxxxx>]

Working as designed I'd say....

Think of it as the same error you'd get if the field was defined as
char(10) and you tried to %subst(XCVAR1:15:5)....

I think the code you posted is a good solution...

Charles

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 2:46 PM, Loek Maartens <l.maartens@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hello group,
>
> I have a field named XCVAR1 in a database file with a size of  150 bytes
> defined with the DDS keyword VARLEN (no size specified).
>
> I understand that this field initially has a length of zero.
>
> Just setting the field XCVAR1 works;
>
> XCVAR1 = 'false' ;
>
> but there might be other values in this VARLEN defined field that I should
> leave intact (and at the same offset) when they were set by other programs.
>
> When trying to set the field to a value like:
>
> %subst(XCVAR1:1:5) = 'false';
>
> the programs throws an error complaining about invalid field size.
>
> If I first set the XCVAR1 field size like;
>
> if %len(XCVAR1) < 5;
> %len(XCVAR1) = 5;
> endif;
>
> all is well.
>
> Should the compiler not just set the length of XCVAR1 to 5 when I assign the
> value 'false' if the XCVAR1 length is less then the value I want to set
> using the %subst function or can someone explain why not?
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Loek Maartens.
>
>
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