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

Well - yes - "associative arrays" or "dynamic data structures" would be nice to have - but I don't hope for it. RPG is a quite statically typed language - and memory management is also quite static.

So Birgittas (and my) idea doesn't target the memory management - or dynamic runtime structures - it's just "syntactic sugar" completely isolated in the compiler. The parameters are still passed the same way as with positional parameters - only that omitted parameters are completely omitted on the caller side and not marked with *OMIT.

But for the called procedure, everything looks exactly the same - whether the caller uses keyword/named parameters or positional parameters.

For real dynamic data, I also pass large VARCHAR parameters with JSON inside. Pretty easy to create with SQL - and also pretty easy consumed with SQL. Sometimes I even use JSON strings as a pretty good replacement for data structure arrays - especially as you can not have dynamic arrays (*AUTO) in dynamic arrays.

Kind regards,
Daniel


> Am 28.02.2026 um 17:57 schrieb Stephen Richter <[email protected]>:
> 
> heck, enable RPG to have dynamic data structures.  Just like a javascript
> object. Then, each named parameter is a property ( sub field ) of the
> dynamic data structure.  And like javascript, the sub field of the dynamic
> data structure can be whatever data type of the value assigned to it.
> 
> to call a program with a named sub field:
> 
> CALL  OE530R PARM( { company: 01, ordnum: [123, 345]})
> 
> -Steve
> 
> 
>> On Fri, Feb 27, 2026 at 2:45 AM Birgitta Hauser <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>> 
>> 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
>> 
>> Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Best regards
>> 
>> Birgitta Hauser
>> Modernization – Education – Consulting on IBM i
>> Database and Software Architect
>> IBM Champion since 2020
>> 
>> "Shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you'll land among the stars." (Les
>> Brown)
>> "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." (Derek Bok)
>> "What is worse than training your staff and losing them? Not training them
>> and keeping them!"
>> "Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they
>> don't want to. " (Richard Branson)
>> "Learning is experience … everything else is only information!" (Albert
>> Einstein)
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: RPG400-L <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Barbara
>> Morris
>> Sent: Thursday, 26 February 2026 18:50
>> To: [email protected]
>> Subject: Re: CCSID - RPG issues
>> 
>>> On 2026-02-26 8:40 a.m., Birgitta Hauser wrote:
>>> SQL could always handle single byte and double byte character sets ...
>>> and
>>> UTF-8 correctly. Transformation occurred automatically.
>>> The problem was always RPG because the data is converted into the Job
>> CCSID.
>>> BTW what is your Job CCSID? 65535?
>>> 
>> 
>> He has DATA(*NOCVT) for the file and CCSID(*EXACT) for the data structure,
>> so it should not be converting the data to the job CCSID.
>> With DATA(*NOCVT), it should get the data correctly even if the job CCSID
>> is
>> 65535.
>> 
>> --
>> Barbara
>> 
>> --
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