Re: How much testing required after CVTRPGSRC?

On Mon, 2015-11-02 at 23:07 -0500, Dan wrote:

(The following originally appeared as a response in a thread on the WDSC
(RDi) list. Someone advised off-list that I should post it here as well.)

I was searching the archives on CVTRPGSRC to see what impact / issues one
could expect to see by converting RPG-III to RPG-IV.

One "gotcha" I hit was the use of *like Defn *IN Afield. After
conversion the Afield becomes a type in its own right, instead of
behaving like a 1 char field. Moving constants, and constant fields, are
type checked to be *on or *off (or equivalent) and the field also has a
default auto-value of *off instead of, if I recall correctly, *blank (At
the least in the programs being changed moving *blank in was allowed
prior to conversion).

Not much of a gotcha, but enough to cause problems when its usage was
other than "as an indicator"... in the case of the programs I was
working on the field was "tri-state" blank=no status (and/or not yet
used/initialised) and then *on/*off as a status. (The actual test was
used as *on=RollUp, *off=RollDown, and *blank=neither).

While technically a "bug", the incorrect usage, the old compiler allowed
it.