Re: Why you shouldn't be afraid to use VARCHAR in RPGLE

Hi Birgitta,

Am 13.12.2025 um 18:11 schrieb Birgitta Hauser <Hauser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

%IF does not (yet?!) exist.
But it would be easy to code ... and for different data types the function can be overloaded.

Well - yes and no - of course you can overload the input parameters - but until now, it is impossible to also override the return value type. All procedures (functions) in a override have to return the exact same type. So you would have to create different functions vor each return type.

ifChar( 1 = 1 : 'Hello' : 'World' );
ifInt( 'Y' = 'N' : 1 : 0 );

... and so on. So a %BIF would be much easier, as it could return an arbitrary type.

Regards,
Daniel