RE: [WEB400] Using Varying

[Buck Calabro <Buck.Calabro@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>I'm using the varying field to build my HTML output.
>Should I be starting the data in byte 3 of that
>field or move the varying field to a fixed
>length field after the data is built?

Sorry to have added to the confusion.  Let me try again.

'Regular' alpha fields are fixed in size.  MOVEL 'X' alpha 5 results in 'X
'  There are always 5 characters in the field.  When you want to concatenate
two of these, you probably don't care about the spaces on the end, so you
%trim() them before concatenation.

Varying fields are NOT fixed in size.  EVAL alpha = 'X' results in a field
that is one character long.  eval alpha = 'X    ' results in a field that is
5 characters long.  Normally, you don't initialise VARYING fields  with the
added blanks, so you have no need to %trim() them before concatenation.

last 50 varying inz('Rogers')
first 50 varying inz('Buck')
name 50 varying inz('')

last is initialised to a 6 character field, first to a 4 character field and
name to a zero length field.

eval name = first + ' ' + last results in last becoming a 11 character
field.

read database
eval varyFirst = %trim(fixedFirst)

If we read this record from the database (Buck Rogers), the database name
FixedFirst might have 30 characters, mostly blanks.  The %trim() discards
those spaces and loads up varyFirst with only the 4 'real' characters in the
field.

I hope that helps.  I think further discussion should move to the RPG list,
because this doesn't sound too web-ish.
  --buck