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Status Not under consideration
Workspace IBM i
Categories Languages - RPG
Created by Guest
Created on Dec 13, 2025

RELATED IDEAS

Allow overloaded procedures to return different data types

Allow overloaded procedure prototypes to return different data type

Example:

dcl-pr proc_char varchar(100);
  parm1 varchar(100) const;
end-pr;

dcl-pr proc_int int(10);
  parm1 int(10) const;
end-pr;

dcl-pr proc like(*prototype) overload(proc_int:proc_char);

It would allow the creation of procedures that "replace" their input parameters with an equivalent value in an expression:

if proc(123) = 123 and proc('ABC') = 'ABC';
  ...
endif;

It should definitely be an explicit / new keyword only allowed with an overload prototype, so that no existing code gets broken.





Idea priority Medium
  • Guest
    Jan 6, 2026
    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.

    It is not feasible to allow overloaded prototypes to have different return types.

    - IBM Power Systems Development
    Reply
  • Guest
    Dec 22, 2025

    I disagree with this idea ... the point of overloaded procedures is to allow the same procedure name to be referenced with different parameters and return a consistent result.

    Having the procedure return different result types would cause confusion and result in significantly more programming effort because you would have to code for each parameter combination in addition to each result type.

    Reply

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