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Status Submitted
Workspace IBM i
Categories Languages - RPG
Created by Guest
Created on Jun 9, 2025

All **FREE to be the first non-blank line in source code instead of strictly the first line

When I code, I always leave the top line blank for various reasons. Also many developers do the same. Some reasons include that RDi doesn't let you insert a line before line 1 (try it, it doesn't) but that's minor. For the most part, I want the compiler to be enhanced so that it too ignores blanks lines at the top of the source member so that when checking for **FREE it can be on line 2, 3, 100 so long as all lines above it are blanks.

I know many (most?) programmers also want to be able to place it after many lines of comments, as do I, so we don't have the one rogue statement at the top of the source code. If that can happen too, great. But I'd settle for allowing it to be the first non-blank line in the source file.

0001

0002

0003 **FREE

0004 ctl-opt ...

Here it appears on line 3, which with this request, would be valid.

Idea priority High