Programs should not break when people change them, yet they often do. Sometimes programs break when programmers modify only one of two things that have to stay in sync. Compilers can’t always catch such errors, but you often can.

For example, suppose that you are developing a program with a control break. Regardless of what language you are using, you will need a holding variable for each control field in order to test when a control field changes. Here’s an example of such a variable.

D SaveItemNo      s                   like(ItemNo)

ItemNo is a database field. SaveItemNo is defined to be like

A while back you posted a tip regarding DLTF with a generic file name. It works great! I needed to copy a physical file and its related logical files to another library. I decided to prompt the CRTDUPOBJ command and was delighted to find that the OBJ parameter can specify a generic name! The file names were similar, with a slight difference in their suffix, so I was able to duplicate multiple objects with one command. Lesson learned: prompt a command once in a while and read all the parameters. Something may have been missed or added in a

I just authorized a user for read-write access to an iSeries NetServer file share in the QDLS file system on my system i machine. However, when he tries to copy a text file to that folder, he gets a Windows error saying ‘Cannot copy file: Access is denied. Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use.‘ I can write to the QDLS folder and he has the same authority that I do. Do you know what’s going on here?

–Bob

It’s been my experience that this error is