Re: Why you shouldn't be afraid to use VARCHAR in RPGLE

agreed.   If the developer does not know C or variants the C notation it would not be understandable 

Exactly how many RPG developers know C?  I’ll wager a small number.  


Jim Oberholtzer
Agile Technology Architects

> On Dec 11, 2025, at 2:01 PM, Brian Parkins <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> May I beg to differ?
> 
> I would suggest many folk will find such an expression too cryptic, especially when maintaining code written by others. It may be efficient, it may be "elegant" - but is it easy to read and understand? Take a very simple example:
> 
> a = a + 5;  -or-  a += 5;
> 
> Personal opinion: the former is more readily understood, the latter not so, and open to miscoding (a =+ 5;). It is my experience that a majority will favour readability in preference to "elegant" coding
> 
> Brian.
> 
>> On 11/12/2025 14:14, Javier Sanchez wrote:
>> BTW, I have wondered a lot why you guys have not yet implemented the C-like
>> expression as:
>> boolVal = (a = b ? 0: 1);
>> This is not only necessary for modern RPG but it should have been provided
>> long time ago! 🙂
> 
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