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Status Not under consideration
Workspace IBM i
Categories Languages - RPG
Created by Guest
Created on Jul 30, 2019

RELATED IDEAS

Allow 3rd parameter of %subst() to exceed length of string

Currently, if I use something like this:

DNKYWD = %subst(NARR: 1: 10);

when NARR is defined in the procedure interface like this:

NARR Varchar(32740) const options(*varsize);

I don't know how long NARR really is unless I check it. This causes an issue where I might get RNX0100 - Length or start position is out of range for the string operation.

The only way to deal with this is to use a much more complex expression:

DNKYWD = %subst(NARR: 1: %min(10: %len(NARR)));

This is way less readable than the first line of code above, and therefore more error prone.

What I really want is the first 10 characters of the string NARR. It shouldn't require such a long expression. The compiler should be able to make sure I don't get that error. If the length of the string is less than the size parameter, just bring back what you can. In fact, if the starting position is beyond the end of the string, the result should be an empty string, not an error.

So for %subst(string: start: length): if start is beyond the length of string, should return an empty string. If start is not beyond length of string, but start + length is beyond the length of string, should return end of string beginning from start.


Use Case:

see description.


Idea priority Medium
  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Apr 21, 2020

    IBM does not intend to provide a solution to this request at this time, so it is being closed.

    This request does not align with the strategy for future investment in the ILE RPG compiler. IBM feels that it would not enhance the maintainability of RPG programs if the "length" parameter for %SUBST could exceed the length of the string. Note that if the length operand is omitted from %SUBST, %SUBST returns the entire string starting at the start position.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Jul 31, 2019

    And for that exact reason i wrote my own strLeft(), strRight(), strMid() library that is more lax to both offsets and lengths

    https://github.com/sitemule/ILEstdlib

    However I think it is a bug in %substr - but that of cause depends how you look at it.

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