What's New in 7.2?

This section describes the enhancements made to ILE RPG in 7.2.

Free-form Control, File, Definition, and Procedure statements

• Free-form Control statements begin with CTL-OPT and end with a semicolon. See Free-Form Control Statement.

   CTL-OPT OPTION(*SRCSTMT : *NODEBUGIO)
           ALWNULL(*USRCTL);

• Free-form File definition statements begin with DCL-F and end with a semicolon. See Free-Form File Definition Statement.
  The following statements define three files

  1. An externally-described DISK file opened for input and update.
  2. An externally-described WORKSTN file opened for input and output.
  3. A program-described PRINTER file with record-length 132.

   DCL-F custFile usage(*update) extfile(custFilename);
   DCL-F screen workstn;
   DCL-F qprint printer(132) oflind(qprintOflow);

• Free-form data definition statements begin with DCL-C, DCL-DS, DCL-PI, DCL-PR, or DCL-S, and end with a semicolon. See Free-Form Definition Statement.
  The following statements define several items

  1. A named constant MAX_ELEMS.
  2. A standalone varying length character field fullName.
  3. A qualified data structure with an integer subfield num and a UCS-2 subfield address.
  4. A prototype for the procedure 'Qp0lRenameUnlink'.

   DCL-C MAX_ELEMS 1000;
   DCL-S fullName VARCHAR(50)
                  INZ('Unknown name');
   DCL-DS ds1 QUALIFIED;
     num INT(10);
     address UCS2(100);
   END-DS;
   DCL-PR Qp0lRenameUnlink INT(10) EXTPROC(*DCLCASE);
      oldName POINTER VALUE OPTIONS(*STRING);
      newName POINTER VALUE OPTIONS(*STRING);
   END-PR;

• Free-form Procedure definition statements begin with DCL-PROC and end with a semicolon. The END-PROC statement is used to end a procedure. See Free-Form Procedure Statement.

  The following example shows a free-form subprocedure definition.

   DCL-PROC getCurrentUserName EXPORT;
      DCL-PI *n CHAR(10) END-PI;
      DCL-S curUser CHAR(10) INZ(*USER);
  
      RETURN curUser;
   END-PROC; 

• The /FREE and /END-FREE directives are no longer required. The compiler will ignore them.
• Free-form statements and fixed-form statements may be intermixed.

           IF endDate < beginDate;
  C                   GOTO      internalError
           ENDIF;
           duration = %DIFF(endDate : beginDate : *days);
           . . .
  C     internalError TAG

Tip: See Differences between fixed-form and free-form to be aware of.

CCSID support for alphanumeric data

• The default alphanumeric CCSID for the module can be set to many more CCSIDs including UTF-8 and hexadecimal.
• Alphanumeric data can be defined with a CCSID. Supported CCSIDs include
  • Single-byte and mixed-byte EBCDIC CCSIDs
  • Single-byte and mixed-byte ASCII CCSIDs
  • UTF-8
  • Hexadecimal
  See CCSID definition keyword.

CCSID of external alphanumeric subfields

Use CCSID(*EXACT) for an externally-described data structure to indicate that the alphanumeric subfields should have the same CCSID as the fields in the file.

CCSID conversion is not performed for hexadecimal data

CCSID conversion is not allowed for implicit or explicit conversion of hexadecimal data.

Hexadecimal data includes

• Hexadecimal literals
• Alphanumeric and graphic data defined with CCSID(*HEX)
• Alphanumeric and graphic data in buffers for externally-described files when the DATA keyword is in effect for the file and the CCSID of the field in the file is 65535
• Alphanumeric and graphic data in externally-described data structures defined with CCSID(*EXACT) when the CCSID of the field in the file is 65535

Implicit conversion for concatenation

The compiler will perform implicit conversion between alphanumeric, graphic, and UCS-2 data for concatenation expressions. See Conversions.

Open database files without conversion to the job CCSID

Use Control keyword OPENOPT(*NOCVTDATA) or File keyword DATA(*NOCVT) to specify that a database file will be opened so that alphanumeric and graphic data will not be converted to and from the job CCSID for input and output operations. See OPENOPT (*{NO}INZOFL *{NO}CVTDATA).

Temporarily change the default CCSIDs, date format, or time format

Use the /SET and /RESTORE directives to set default values for date formats, time formats, and CCSIDs. See /SET.

Control the length returned by %SUBDT

An optional third parameter for %SUBDT allows you to specify the number of digits in the result. For example, you can return the value of the years as a four-digit value: %SUBDT(MyDate:*YEARS:4).

See %SUBDT (Extract a Portion of a Date, Time, or Timestamp).

Increased precision for timestamp data

Timestamp data can have between 0 and 12 fractional seconds. See Timestamp Data Type.

Open Access files

An Open Access file is a file which has all its operations handled by a user-written program or procedure, rather than by the operating system. This program or procedure is called an "Open Access Handler" or simply a "handler". The HANDLER keyword specifies the handler. See Open Access Files.

New XML-INTO options

• XML namespaces are supported by the "ns" and "nsprefix" options. See ns option and nsprefix option.
• XML names with characters that are not supported by RPG for subfield names are supported by the "case=convert" option. See case option.

Support for CCSID conversions that cause a loss of data when a source character does not exist in the target character set

Control-specification keyword CCSIDCVT(*EXCP : *LIST). See CCSIDCVT(*EXCP | *LIST).

• Use CCSIDCVT(*EXCP) to get an exception if a CCSID conversion loses data due to the source character not having a match in the target character set.
• Use CCSIDCVT(*LIST) to get a listing of every CCSID conversion in the module, with a diagnostic message indicating whether the conversion has the potential of losing data.

VALIDATE(*NODATETIME) to allow the RPG compiler to skip the validation step when working with date, time and timestamp data

Use Control-specification keyword VALIDATE(*NODATETIME) to allow the RPG compiler to treat date, time, and timestamp data as character data, without performing the checks for validity. See VALIDATE(*NODATETIME).

This may improve the performance of some date, time, and timestamp operations.

Warning: Skipping the validation step can lead to serious data corruption problems. You should only use this feature when you are certain that your date, time, and timestamp data is always valid.