RE: RPG String Compare - Bug or not?

If they are in a character variable, 1 and 1.0 are not equal.

The problem is that most programming languages like Java and C do not process fixed length strings very nicely if at all. When you mix fixed length with varying length, as RPG does, you have to make concessions. For most RPG programmers, that means spaces at the end of a field are ignored for character comparisons. If you change the rules when dealing with varying character fields, then you will have to remember (maybe 1 or 2 years down the road) which character fields are defined with Varchar, and which ones are defined with Char, because it would now matter. The principle of least surprise (not that RPG doesn't behave exactly like Java, but that RPG doesn't behave like RPG) seems to me to indicate that all character comparisons should ignore trailing spaces, not just the ones that are purely fixed length.

Mark Murphy
STAR BASE Consulting, Inc.
mmurphy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


-----Justin Taylor <JUSTIN@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: -----
To: "RPG programming on the IBM i (AS/400 and iSeries)" <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Justin Taylor <JUSTIN@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 03/27/2015 12:43PM
Subject: RE: RPG String Compare - Bug or not?

Not.

You say that 'a' and 'a ' aren't equal. Then are 1 and 1.0 not equal?