The code associated with this article is available for download.

Would you be interested in publishing a program that calculates statistical values, such as average, standard deviation, maximum value, and minimum value? I have such a program, which I use in to calculate average usage and standard deviation of the usage of the items we handle.

–Victor Pisman

Thanks to faithful reader Victor Pisman for an interesting program. When I think of calculating an average, I think in terms of accumulating an amount and counting before dividing. Victor took a different approach, and I like it.

Victor’s RPG program,

The code associated with this article is available for download.

Last week, I told you about an easy way to power programming–creating CL commands with variable-length parameters. Using variable-length parameters lets you pass variables of different sizes to commands, instead of requiring that you use variables of certain lengths. It also helps you to solve certain problems once, and be done with them. This week, I am going to show you how you can make the variable-length parameter technique even easier.

Last week’s command, ZEROSUP, invoked a CL program in order to strip leading zeros from a number stored

i5, iSeries, and AS/400 administrators dread the call telling them that: a) the system has ground to a halt; b) they better figure out why; because c) invoices are not printing, orders are not being entered; and d) the company president wants to talk to them. Fortunately, there are some simple i5/OS tools that you can use to find runaway jobs that cause performance problems.

When i5 systems choke up like this, chances are good that the system is slowing down because one or more jobs are using too much CPU time. This job could be in an infinite loop,