Easy to create shortcut commands

After my post about how to create your own commands I received messages from readers giving me examples of how they have created their own shortcut commands, to do the same as the standard IBM i command but shorter. In one example the command SP did the same as WRKSPLF.

I don't think many people know of proxy commands. These allow me to create shortcut commands of the regular IBM i commands without any programming. You can even make proxies of proxy commands, although I cannot think of a reason why I would ever think to do so.

In this example I am going to create a proxy command, SP, for the Work with Spooled Files command, WRKSPLF.

Sending your own program created messages to the error subfile

I have previously written about using the error subfile to display error messages, rather than the message subfile. Personally I like using the error subfile as it is another case of allowing the operating system to do the work for me.

Since publishing that article I have received messages asking how can people create their own error message text, in the RPG program, that is displayed in the error subfile.

Fortunately there is a simple way to do this that will work in either RPG in CL.

No matter which language I use the display file can be the same. Here is the display file I will be using in this example.

Built in function to return name of procedure

Until the last round of Technical Refreshes, IBM i 7.2 TR7 and 7.3 TR3, I could not find a way to retrieve the name of the procedure that I was in. The program data structure enticed me with the *PROC keyword. This was not the procedure's name, but rather either the program's or module's name.

01 DPgmDs SDS qualified 02 D ProcName *PROC 01 dcl-ds PgmDs psds qualified ; 02 ProcName *proc ; 03 end-ds ;

Fortunately these two Technical Refreshes introduced a new built in function, BiF, to returns the name of the current procedure: %PROC

This example is of what I call a closed subprocedure and how this new BiF works.

Handling nulls in CL

I have written previously about how to handle nulls values in RPG and in SQL, but until this week I had never had a problem with null in a CL program.

The CL program was "reading" a SQL table, where some columns/fields were null.

ORDNBR ORDSTS ORDVALUE 01 PO18087 P 145.67 02 PO18556 C 15.36 03 PO18223 - - 04 PO18777 D -

The CL program is simple.