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Developer > WebSphere

iSeries EXTRA: /Free Your I/O Operations

August 2003 | by Susan Gantner and Jon Paris

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Note that the %Fields list is specified in the Result field position, which makes a lot of sense. We really love this one! It provides a great way to protect your code
from the worst efforts of, shall we say, "less-gifted" programmers.
One point we should make: You may have noticed that all of our examples use the new /Free style coding. This is because all of these new features are only
available in this format. They aren't supported in the conventional fixed-column format. This is hardly surprising, because there isn't enough room in the fixed factor
and result fields for the kind of lists %Fields and %KDS require, for example. Faced with this reality, the compiler writers were forced to either introduce a new
"semi-free" version of the I/O operations that would utilize the extended Factor 2 field used currently by IF/EVAL, etc., or simply extend the I/O support in /Free
which was introduced in V5R1. They chose the latter, and as RPGers who have often been frustrated by the amount of "wasted" space on the left-hand side of
EVAL operations, we think they made the right choice. Expect to see more /Free-only features in future releases.
Even with this list, we still haven't covered all of the new features added to RPG in V5, so we'll return to that topic next month.
A final note: For a future column, we're considering developing a wish list of items we'd like to see in future RPG IV releases. We'd welcome your ideas in that
column. If there's anything you can think of that would make your RPG coding life even easier, just write to us.

Page 1 2 3
Susan Gantner is a technical editor with IBM Systems Magazine and co-owner of Partner400.
More Articles From Susan Gantner
Jon Paris is a technical editor with IBM Systems Magazine and co-owner of Partner400.
More Articles From Jon Paris

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