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Status Not under consideration
Workspace IBM i
Categories Languages - RPG
Created by Guest
Created on Mar 7, 2025

RELATED IDEAS

Add 2nd parameter to %UPPER and %LOWER to limit length of conversion in target variable

When working with buffers, such as VARCHAR(65535) or CHAR(65535) etc. I often get the length of the buffer returned to me by another function.

What I would like to do is to specify that length as the 2nd parameter of %UPPER and %LOWER so that only that many characters are translated.

I could use %SUBST but that has issues with readability, temp variables, and clutter. 

dcl-s cgiBuffer char(65535);
dcl-s rtnLen int(10);
  rtnLen = cgi_getQueryString( cgiBuffer );
  cgiBuffer = %upper( cgiBuffer : rtnLen);

verses the way we have to do it today:

dcl-s cgiBuffer char(65535);
dcl-s rtnLen int(10);
  rtnLen = cgi_getQueryString( cgiBuffer );
  cgiBuffer = %upper( %SUBST(cgiBuffer : 1 : rtnLen) );

Idea priority Medium
  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Mar 10, 2025

    I am on V7R3 but moving to V7R4 and did not see that capability nor did I read it in the documentation. I'll bring up the V7R5 docs and read those moving forward. Thanks for the info, I appreciate it.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Mar 10, 2025
    Thank you for taking the time to submit your Idea. However, IBM does not intend to provide a solution to this Idea at this time, so it is being closed.

    %LOWER and %UPPER already have two extra parameters (start and length) that control the number of characters that are affected.

    %LOWER('HELLO' : 2 : 4)
    returns 'Hello'

    Adding additional substring parameters to these built-in functions would make them too complex.

    You could use %LEFT instead of %SUBST to somewhat simplify your statement:
    cgiBuffer = %upper( %left(cgiBuffer : rtnLen) );

    -IBM Power Systems Development

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