Re: Handling packed data in Character string

On 2021-07-15 10:34 p.m., Singh, Ashwani (Lake Mary) via RPG400-L wrote:

One critical piece of information that I missed as that it substring of 18Bytes out of 1200 long field which we are talking about.

Also I meant for 90% of records has this 18byes as Char and only 10% has packed numeric data.

For the 10% of cases, do you want to print out the packed data as a number?

To find out whether the entire 18 Bytes has valid packed data, you could use %CHECK:

First check the first 17 bytes. All the half-bytes should be 0-9. Then check the last byte. The first half-byte should be 0-9 and the last half-byte should be the sign, either 'D' or 'F'. (Also 'A' 'B' 'C' and 'E' are actually valid signs, so you could also check for those if you see them in the packed data.)

I tested this a little bit ...

dcl-c valid_first_packed_bytes x'00010203040506070809+
01111213141516171819+
21212223242526272829+
31313233343536373839+
41414243444546474849+
51515253545556575859+
61616263646566676869+
71717273747576777879+
81818283848586878889+
91919293949596979899';
dcl-c valid_last_packed_byte x'0F1F2F3F4F5F6F7F8F9F+
0D1D2D3D4D5D6D7D8D9D';
dcl-s p1 int(10);
dcl-s p2 int(10);

p1 = %check(valid_first_packed_bytes : %subst(num:1:17));
p2 = %check(valid_last_packed_byte : %subst(num:18:1));
if p1 = 0 and p2 = 0;
it is a valid packed value