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IBM Power Ideas Portal


This portal is to open public enhancement requests against IBM Power Systems products, including IBM i. To view all of your ideas submitted to IBM, create and manage groups of Ideas, or create an idea explicitly set to be either visible by all (public) or visible only to you and IBM (private), use the IBM Unified Ideas Portal (https://ideas.ibm.com).


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Languages - RPG

Better UTF-8 (1208) unicode support (XML, DDS, ...)

Many functions related to Unicode like XML-Into, DDS support, ... only work with CCSID 1200 and not with CCSID 1208 which is a much common data representation in our environments. Use Case: Many functions related to Unicode like XML-Into, DDS supp...
over 7 years ago in IBM i / Languages - RPG Not under consideration

Defaults for Dcl-pi;

Parameters for programs and procedures are declared with Dcl-pi. Today it requires to to give the name or *N. But for programs and procedures that does not return a value - it would be appreciated if that was not required and could default to *N a...
almost 4 years ago in IBM i / Languages - RPG Future consideration

Allow Unabbreviated RPG Freeform Data Type Keywords

Please change the SQL precompiler, RPG compiler, and Rational Developer for i to also recognize and allow the unabbreviated forms of the RPG freeform data type keywords. Use Case: For example, ucs2 is fine as it is. But, allow: integer for intindi...
almost 9 years ago in IBM i / Languages - RPG Not under consideration

Prefix or Qualified Keyword for Exports and/or Prototypes

Currently exported identifiers (procs, functions, variables, data-structures) need to be unique across an application framework. This is a massive obstacle in modernization efforts. For proper modernization and modern programming approach it is ab...
over 9 years ago in IBM i / Languages - RPG Future consideration

heredoc syntax for large literals

When developing SQLRPG programs, I frequently have to deal with large multiline literal strings for defining SQL statements. I have in fact exceeded the size limit of a string literal in the past. It would be nice to have a HEREDOC syntax for assi...
almost 10 years ago in IBM i / Languages - RPG Not under consideration

Enhancements to RPG should be reflected in a target release number that we can compile to.

You are publishing more and more enhancements to the RPG language which I find good. But this also gives us problems because the runtime environments are not backwards compatible. When new releases are published we normally install it on our test ...
over 5 years ago in IBM i / Languages - RPG Not under consideration

Prevent some RNF7031s. Add a way to indicate specific items which should not be diagnosed as un-referenced

Fields defined in ILE RPG source may be diagnosed as not being used by the program; but the developer may have reasons for keeping them. (They might be part of included files, part of API's, or intended for future use.) It is suggested that a comp...
over 5 years ago in IBM i / Languages - RPG Future consideration

Allow to sort a subfile as simple as sorting an Array DS

I have written numerous programs to sort subfiles, but if RPG implemetns it it would save code, standarize the code, and make the use of RPG more of a pleasure. Use Case: SORTSFL (mysfl:mycolumn1(*ASC);mycolumn2(*DESC))
about 9 years ago in IBM i / Languages - RPG Not under consideration

Support both spellings for OPTION and OPTIONS in RPG IV

The H spec or CTL-OPT keyword and RPG Subprocedure Parameter Definitions use different spellings for OPTION/OPTIONS. Please relax the spelling requirements for the OPTION keyword so that both OPTION and OPTIONS are supported in both contexts, and ...
over 5 years ago in IBM i / Languages - RPG Not under consideration

%SCANRPL to replace only *FIRST (or *LAST) occurence

%SCANRPL is a nice and usefull function but sometimes we need to limit the replacement to the first or the last occurence. Of course we can code around it using %scan but nowadays UTF strings are more complicated so the code itself can became frag...
10 months ago in IBM i / Languages - RPG Future consideration