RE: How were first 5 positions used in RPG III?

Okay, for those of us old timers columns 1 to 5 were for Page and Line numbers from Coding Sheets. The coding sheets were turned into the Keypunch Operators and then you got the Card Deck and the Sheets back. Then if you were fortunate to have the compiler loaded on disk you could put JCL cards around your deck followed by an execute statement and your data with an end of file card. If you dropped the cards you could go over to the card sorter and get your deck back in order.

Why are the good old days so good?

George Smith

-----Original Message-----
From: RPG400-L [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Vernon Hamberg
Sent: Monday, January 30, 2017 1:23 PM
To: RPG programming on the IBM i (AS/400 and iSeries)
Subject: Re: How were first 5 positions used in RPG III?

Hi Jeff

Thanks, yeah, I gave it a try - this was just interesting - my colleague across the aisle says that was originally a sequence area for punch cards.

Now don't drop the stack of cards, please!!

Vern

On 1/30/2017 12:46 PM, Jeff Young wrote:

Vern,

From what I recall, at least starting with RPG II, that was just a
sequence

field.
I know for a fact, that you can put anything you want there, and I
character data all the time.

Jeff Young
Sr. Programmer Analyst

On Mon, Jan 30, 2017 at 1:12 PM, Vernon Hamberg
<vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Deep memory dive needed here!

I'm maintaining code, adding a change to an RPG III source.

RDi at the latest version has syntax coloring, of course, and there
is a number in positions 1-4 that has been used for a change request reference.

RDi colors the 1st 2 positions as black, the next 2 positions as some
kind of grey, the same syntax color as the entry columns of a File
Description Continuation RENAME.

I went to the RPG/400 documentation and found the following: "Page
(positions 1-2) and Line (positions 3-5). These are the equivalent of
source line number" ILE RPG says those positions can be used as a
comment, which is what I always understood.

Just curious if anyone remembers and can say more - I'm wondering now
if I can even put non-numerics in those columns!

Cheers
Vern
--
This is the RPG programming on the IBM i (AS/400 and iSeries)
(RPG400-L) mailing list To post a message email:
RPG400-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list
options,
visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/rpg400-l
or email: RPG400-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx Before posting, please take a
moment to review the archives at
http://archive.midrange.com/rpg400-l.

Please contact support@xxxxxxxxxxxx for any subscription related
questions.

Help support midrange.com by shopping at amazon.com with our
affiliate
link: http://amzn.to/2dEadiD

--
This is the RPG programming on the IBM i (AS/400 and iSeries) (RPG400-L) mailing list To post a message email: RPG400-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/rpg400-l
or email: RPG400-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives at http://archive.midrange.com/rpg400-l.

Please contact support@xxxxxxxxxxxx for any subscription related questions.

Help support midrange.com by shopping at amazon.com with our affiliate link: http://amzn.to/2dEadiD