Even though high-level languages make it unnecessary–and in many cases, difficult–to understand what is going on “under the covers,” I have always found a basic knowledge of internal processes to be invaluable. This is particularly true when it comes to resolving mystery bugs. I was reminded of this recently by a number of problems related to parameter passing that appeared on Internet lists and also in my email directly from customers.

My need to understand internals is due, at least in part, to the fact that I learned assembler and other low-level languages at an early stage in my career.

The end of the year is upon us and the holidays are fast approaching. That sounds like a good excuse for some odds and ends. I hope you find something helpful here.–Ted

Hey, Ted:

I’m writing in response to Michael Sansoterra’s article, Native Regular Expressions In DB2 For i 7.1 And 7.2. I don’t use regular expressions much, but our C# development team does. Here’s a regular expression that I find to be of help.

// count the slashes in the URL
Dcl-S Count     Packed(4);

Exec sql
   set :Count = REGEXP_COUNT('/qibm/ProdData/Java400/bin/JavaDoc','/') ;

–Steve

Three decades or so ago, when

IBM i includes many reports that we can use to glean a lot of information. If you run packaged software, the vendor likely includes many other reports. The problem with such reports is that they often contain more information than what you need and want. After all, they’re written for the world at large, not tailored for you. It may be that a utility that resides on your system can transform reports into something more suitable for you and those who use your system.

First, let’s get a report.

DSPLNK OUTPUT(*PRINT) DETAIL(*EXTENDED) DSPOPT(*USER)

Running this command on one of the