Dear Intelligent Power-on-i Professional:

I deem it grand of IBM to give us great tools that relieve us of the need to write programs to accomplish mundane, quotidian tasks. The Copy to Import File (CPYTOIMPF) command is such an animal. However, nothing’s perfect on this planet, and CPYTOIMPF is no exception. Here are two annoyances or problems (depending on your point of view), and how to get around them.

Strip Out Unwanted Blanks

I’m using CPYTOIMPF to build a CSV file. CPYTOIMPF leaves lots of blank space in the stream file. Is there any way to tell CPYTOIMPF that I

Is there a book on how RPG operation codes and built-in functions translate to SQL? I’m trying to leverage my RPG coding skills to write logic in a DB2 stored procedure. That is, I know exactly what to do in RPG, but I don’t know the SQL equivalent.

To determine the length of a city name, I would use RPG code like this:

Eval CityLength = %Len(%Trim(City))

How would I do the same in a stored procedure SET statement? I have used the following to find a field length, but my field is an input parameter to the stored procedure.

Even though AS/400 Integrated File System (AS/400 IFS) folders can contain the same type of stream file data as network file servers do, many administrators still don’t understand how to perform basic file functions such as checking out and checking in files, and changing properties for an AS/400 IFS Root (/) file object. This week, let’s review some basic but important functions you can perform on IFS stream file objects.

Changing IFS File Properties

The quickest way to change the attributes of IFS PC and Unix stream files is to use the Properties function IBM offers in iSeries Navigator (OpsNav).