Find the Length of a Character String in CL

October 19, 2005 Hey, Ted

Numerous times over the years, I’ve seen this question: How can I find the length of the value in a CL variable? That is, how many characters are in a variable, ignoring trailing blanks? I needed the answer often enough myself that I created my own “clever” way to handle it years ago by creating a RTNLEN command. But I recently discovered an alternative that’s been around forever. It uses a single command, RTVMSG, and it works for character variables up to 512 bytes long.

Here’s an example:

dcl &myvar *char 256 value('Abcd') /* Can be max *CHAR(512) */ 
dcl 

Bugged by the Interactive Debugger

October 19, 2005 Hey, Brian and Joey

After having a problem attempting to use the Interactive Source Debugger (ISDB) to debug RPGLE and RPGSQLLE programs, I was so frustrated that I admit I punted. It was the first time I had tried to debug an RPGLE program I had written. When I attempted to start the ISDB debugger (using the STRISDB command), nothing happened. The STRISDB command wouldn’t even open the program.

To make matters worse, a co-worker of mine said that ISDB could not be used to debug RPGLE programs and I was left wondering what I was going to do. I managed to fix my

Admin Alert: How to Change OS/400 Command Default Parameters

October 19, 2005 Joe Hertvik

A number of readers have recently written in and asked me how to change default parameters for OS/400 commands. While IBM does provide the Change Command Default command (CHGCMDDFT) for this purpose, there are a few wrinkles in the process that you need to understand to use CHGCMDDFT effectively.

Before you begin changing command parameters, it’s always best to make a copy of each command that you want to change and only modify the copied command. This is a wise move for a number of reasons. First, you can retain IBM’s original unaltered commands in case you make a mistake