Re: Extfile and ExtDesc -- RPG400-L

Jerry,

What Jon is referring to (as I interpreted it) is that in fixed format RPG you can do the following:

D myDS          E DS                  ExtName(XXXX)

In this case, XXXX is interpreted by the RPG compiler as the name of the file to get the external definitions for, and is not case-sensitive. Whereas in free-format, you have to do the following:

dcl-ds myDS ext extfile('XXXX') end-ds;

The quotes are required because without the quotes CUSTMAS would be interpreted as a named constant. And the quotes make it case-sensitive.

But, I believe Jon mistakenly applied it to ExtFile and ExtDesc, which never allowed it to be interpreted as the filename without the quotes. You are actually saying the same thing that I am, except that you are approaching it from the perspective of using a variable for the filename -- the opposite perspective that the OP used, and opposite of what Jon was referring to when he said it now requires quotes.

FMYFILE    IF   E             DISK    ExtFile(XXX) <-- XXX is treated as a variable name.

or

dcl-f MYFILE disk extfile(XXX);

In both cases it is interpreted as a VARIABLE, it's never interpreted as the file name. It will get the name from the contents of the variable, which is exactly what you're saying. And that's sort of my point -- ExtFile and ExtDesc have always required quotes, otherwise it is treated as a variable name.

If you want it to be treated as a literal, which is what the OP was doing, then it needs to be quoted and will be case-sensitive.

FMYFILE    IF   E             DISK    ExtFile('XXX') <-- XXX is treated as a case-sensitive file name

On 8/10/24 5:19 AM, Jerry Adams wrote:

I have never used quotes (single or double) around ExtFile, rather
ExtFile(MyFile) and, then defined MyFile in D-specs as 10A. Thinking about
it this early in the morning, the reason I do that is because most of my
files are legacy S/34/36 files with a group id, such as A.MYFILE and
B.MYFILE. So once I know which company the program is running over, I can
build in my initialization routine, such as MyFile = group + '.MYFILE' and
only then OPEN MYFIE.

In other words, if the F-Spec name is the same as the file/table on disk, I
do not use ExtFile; why would I?

Jerry C. Adams
IBM i Programmer/Analyst
Umpires should be natural Republicans - dead to 'human feelings'. - George
Will
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NMM&D
615-585-2175

-----Original Message-----
From: RPG400-L [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Scott Klement
Sent: Saturday, August 10, 2024 12:27 AM
To: rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Extfile and ExtDesc

ExtFile and ExtDesc have always required quotes and always been
case-sensitive.

You are thinking of ExtName that once allowed unquoted names.

On 8/7/24 3:29 PM, Jon Paris wrote:

Just as a general FYI ...

When RPG changed to accept named constants for file names etc. it became a

requirement to place literal names in quotes. That also means of course that
they must also be in upper case.

Jon P