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Status Future consideration
Workspace IBM i
Categories Languages - RPG
Created by Guest
Created on Aug 1, 2024

RELATED IDEAS

Merged idea
This idea has been merged into another idea. To comment or vote on this idea, please visit IBMI-I-4167 %repeat as a BIF in RPGLE.

Tailor a new BIF %SPACES that would return an arbitrary number of spaces to concatenate to a string Merged

There are quite a few ways to implement in the language that take a few lines of code.  This BIF would simplify the coding and would give an elegant, fast, and flexible way to return an arbitarty number of spaces.  Even more, it could be tailored to return a buffer with a character that is defined as the second parameter.

The default behavior would be like:

stmfString = %SPACES(50);

The optional parameter would be a literal character or a variable that contains one single character.

Idea priority Low
  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Aug 26, 2024
    Your request is a duplicate of IBM Idea 4167 ("%repeat as a BIF in RPGLE"). https://ibm-power-systems.ideas.ibm.com/ideas/IBMI-I-4167

    -IBM Power Systems Development
  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Aug 1, 2024

    I would like a %REPEAT BIF as well.  The first parm should allow a string > one character, so en entire string can be repeated.  The can be a second optional parm with the number of times to repeat.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Aug 1, 2024

    I'd name it %repeat so it matches the SQL scalar function REPEAT, which accepts a string (as opposed to a single character), and a number of times to repeat, e.g. myVar = %repeat('abc' : 10);

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Aug 1, 2024

    It'd be great if we also had the lpad, rpad and repeat functions from SQL aviable.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Aug 1, 2024

    I think if a BIF is going to be created it should allow the character to be inserted to be defined. 

    It could default to blanks but allow a parameter to specify like 

    %SPACE(50)

    %SPACE(50 : '*')

    Also would suggest the name of the BIF should match the same function in other languages.

    2 replies

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