IBM Power Ideas Portal
Hide about this 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).


Shape the future of IBM!

We invite you to shape the future of IBM, including product roadmaps, by submitting ideas that matter to you the most. Here's how it works:

Search existing ideas

Start by searching and reviewing ideas and requests to enhance a product or service. Take a look at ideas others have posted, and add a comment, vote, or subscribe to updates on them if they matter to you. If you can't find what you are looking for,

Post your ideas

  1. Post an idea.

  2. Get feedback from the IBM team and other customers to refine your idea.

  3. Follow the idea through the IBM Ideas process.


Specific links you will want to bookmark for future use

Welcome to the IBM Ideas Portal (https://www.ibm.com/ideas) - Use this site to find out additional information and details about the IBM Ideas process and statuses.

IBM Unified Ideas Portal (https://ideas.ibm.com) - Use this site to view all of your ideas, create new ideas for any IBM product, or search for ideas across all of IBM.

ideasibm@us.ibm.com - Use this email to suggest enhancements to the Ideas process or request help from IBM for submitting your Ideas.

Add a new idea Subscribe
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

See this idea on ideas.ibm.com

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

By clicking the "Post Comment" or "Submit Idea" button, you are agreeing to the IBM Ideas Portal Terms of Use.
Do not place IBM confidential, company confidential, or personal information into any field.