Re: Address of Variable in Service Program Exported Procedure

As others have intimated this is a _really_ bad idea even if it worked -
which would be circumstance dependent. It is a very error prone design.

Returning a pointer in general is rarely a good idea for two main reasons.
One, the code that has the address can change the content of the variable
"invisibly". And 2) The code that has that pointer has no way of knowing if
it is still valid! If it pointed to stack storage (for example) it would
still be valid pointer long after the storage had been reused by another
process!

This is in the category of things your mother (had she been a programmer)
would have warned you would make you go blind if you kept doing it!


Jon P.

On Nov 7, 2022, at 9:52 AM, Vinay Gavankar <vinaygav@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi,

We have an exported procedure in a Service program (RPG) which needs to
pass back the address of a variable, so that the calling program can
use the value in that variable.

Can the calling program (RPG) access the value of the variable if it is
defined within that exportable procedure, or does the variable need to be
'global' in the Service Program?

TIA
Vinay
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