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Developer > RPG

How Flexible are Your Calculations?

RPG programming techniques to help you solve unsolvable problems.
September 2007 | by Jon Paris and Susan Gantner

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To accommodate this, well need to copy the data from the original variable into one that matches the common definition shared by the calculation
subprocedures. Once we accept that necessity, we can set up the names of the variables and their pointers in matching arrays, much as we did with
the procedure pointers and the operation codes. Given that our example program uses the simple variable names A, B, C and D, the three sets of data
look like this:

Notice that to simplify changes in the future, weve defined a single variable named number, which is referenced via the LIKE keyword when
defining the numeric variables to be used in the calculations. By defining fields this way, it becomes simple to change the program to process values
larger than the 15,5 packed fields currently supported, should we need to do so later.
Next page: >>

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

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E-Newsletter Exclusive | In the September EXTRA e-Newsletter, Jon Paris and Susan Gantner shared some solutions to &qout;unsolvable&qout;
RPG problems with a technique for flexible calculations. Now they delve deeper with a more complex example, making a sequence of calculations
not only possible but simple to create and use.
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Cover Story | Alternate approaches to extending your RPG applications.
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