Re: New IBM idea - Named Parameters at Program and Procedure Calls

Luca Giammattei <[email protected]> Fri, 27 Feb 2026 15:52:25 +0100
Newsgroups gmane.comp.lang.as400.rpg
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Il 27/02/2026 08:44, Birgitta Hauser ha scritto:
> I have added a new IBM idea, to allow specifying Parameter Names (and
> assigning the parameter values) at program/procedure calls (in the same way
> as you can do it with SQL Stored Procedures, UDFs and UDTFs)
> https://ideas.ibm.com/ideas/IBMI-I-4826
> 
> Please LIKE if you think it would be helpful/useful
> 

Interesting idea, although one of the things I've always loved about our 
compiler's parameter management style is that it doesn't care about their names; 
what really matters is their nature and order. So I don't see it as easy to 
implement in contexts with legacy code or even a mix of legacy and free. Perhaps 
it should be limited to the fully free language, and even here I'm not sure. I 
wouldn't want to be constrained by the parameter name rather than its nature, 
even though today, when everyone programs with advanced tools like VS Code or 
RDi (right?), managing these aspects is much simpler.

What if the parameters are also used to pass messages from one program to 
another? Nothing would change, right?
I'm thinking of the case where pgm1 calls pgm2, passing it two parameters: one 
containing data to be used within pgm2's processing and the other as a sort of 
return code for the outcome of the processing.

something like
foopgm(parm1:rtncode);
if rtncode=*blanks;
//successful execution
elseif rtncode <> *blanks;
//something went wrong, let's log the error
endif;
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