Re: Outline view falsely reports zoned I-spec fields as packed

RPG will always convert zoned fields to packed for internal use - unless - the field in question is defined in a DS. Thus has ever been - at least on the S/38 side of the family.

So what Vern saw in RDi was accurate.

To see the difference just define a zoned file field in a DS (just bu specifying the filed name in the DS) and then hover over the variable and it will be shown as zoned.

A similar thing happens with date/time fields. No matter what format they have on the DB they will be converted by RPG to the default format for the program (normally *ISO) for internal usage. Same rule re placing the field in a DS applies here. The DS will preserve the original format. This is often a cause of performance issues with date heavy files where in DB2 they are in *USA but there was no *USA datefmt specified to the RPG program.

Jon Paris

www.partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com

On Oct 24, 2014, at 1:23 PM, CRPence <CRPbottle@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 24-Oct-2014 11:29 -0500, Vernon Hamberg wrote:

I just noticed, working in some old code, that when there is an
I-spec that defines a zoned field (blank in the data type and a
number in decimal places) that the field list displays it as packed.
<<SNIP>>

As I recall, that is the expected effect; an /implicit/ conversion to packed that consistently confounded me every time I looked at a listing and saw the Packed designation.

In my experience, as I recall, although the /field/ is being properly represented as zoned data for the actual file I\O, the /variable/ that gets declared to store that data is generated as Packed; i.e. in the expansion of the program listing where the data types\attributes are presented for the variables of the RPG program, a /variable name/ that happens to have been declared with the same name as the /field name/ appears as a Packed Decimal, but the I/O performs as expected because the /field/ within the database buffer is properly represented as Zoned Decimal.?

--
Regards, Chuck
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