Re: Fun with compiler upgrades

[Charles Wilt <charles.wilt@xxxxxxxxx>]

Yep...it's documented... 7.2 MTU
https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/ssw_ibm_i_72/rzaq9/rzaq9lpp5770rpgwrapper.htm

"A non-qualified subfield or format cannot be qualified within a
subprocedure
It is not valid to use qualified notation, A.B, for subfields and record
formats that are not qualified. Before IBM® i 7.2, the compiler did not
always detect this error if the reference to the global subfield or record
format was in a subprocedure. Starting in 7.2, the compiler detects this
error and diagnostic: RNF7591 - An operand of a qualified name expression
is not valid is issued at compile time."

Bit us too :)

Charles

On Tue, May 1, 2018 at 4:26 PM, Joe Pluta <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

> I have a fun story to share and a question.
>
> The fun story is that during our upgrade, we had a period where our
> development machine was at 7.3 and our production machine was still at
> 7.1.  We would compile on our development machine with TGTRLS(V7R1M0) in
> order to install on production.
>
> Well, now out machines are all at 7.3 and I removed the TGTRLS from our
> compile commands.  Everything was wonderful until today, when a program
> that had compiled just fine wouldn't compile anymore.  We were able to
> trace the event to the upgrade and then I tracked down the line that was
> failing.
>
> Well, it was definitely a mistake on my part.  I had originally created a
> qualified externally described data structure but then changed it to
> unqualified.  No problem, except I forgot to remove the qualification on a
> couple of lines of code:
>
>      saveMYFIELD = dsName.MYFIELD;
>
> The fun bit is that those lines still compiled!  It's a large, complex
> program with lots of strange behavior in it, and something particular to
> the source allows that to happen, because if I try it with a shorter
> program (to try to isolate the issue) I can't get it to compile; I keep
> getting error RNF7030 saying "MYFIELD" is not defined.  It's only under a
> very specific (and currently undefined) set of conditions that this line of
> incorrect code compiles (and works!).
>
> And whatever that edge condition was in the 7.1 version of the compiler,
> it's been fixed in 7.3.  Weirdly, I don't get the error I expect .
> Instead, I get an unfamiliar RNF7591 error saying "An operand of a
> qualified name expression is not valid".  So those lines of code have to be
> fixed, which is perfectly fair.
>
> The question I have is whether this sort of behavior - where IBM fixes a
> loophole - is documented somewhere.  I haven't been able to find it
> anywhere online, but I suspect I may have to dig in somewhere else.  If
> anybody knows where I can look, please let me know.
>
> Thanks!
>
>
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