More on RPG Encapsulation

January 12, 2005 Joel Cochran

The code for this article is available for download.

Reader response to my July article, “Encapsulating File Access in a Service Program,” filled my mailbox for some time. Most of the feedback has been extremely positive, with readers wanting information on some of the more advanced techniques I referred to but didn’t have column space to explain.

Many of the questions had to do with embedded SQL and how to incorporate that into the service program to offer more flexibility. In this article, I address a number of these questions and offer some more techniques to employ in this

Advanced Pattern Matching in RPG

January 12, 2005 Michael Sansoterra

The code for this article is available for download.

SQL has many great features, including the LIKE predicate. LIKE’s power is manifest in its ability to have multiple wild cards in a search pattern. Unfortunately, RPG’s closest analog to LIKE is the %SCAN built-in function, which is limited to searching a string for a single substring.

Even though %SCAN’s power is limited, a little extra code can be used to simulate LIKE. The code in program LikeR.RPGLE contains subprocedure Like. The parameters for the Like subprocedure are:

Like(search string:pattern[:wildcard])

An indicator variable is returned by Like to indicate

The Dangers of Temporarily Changing User Profiles

January 12, 2005 Hey, Ted

In “Monitoring for System Request Menu Option 2,” you answered a question from Paul, who needed to write a CL program that temporarily changes a user profile. I always worry when I hear someone is going to temporarily change a user profile and then change it back. Lots of things could happen that would cause problems. Paul realized System Request menu option 2 (ENDRQS) could cause problems that would prevent him from returning the user profile to its original state. What neither you nor Paul mentioned, however, is that options 1 and 90 from the System Request menu could also