IBM Licensed Programs: Application Development Products 663
IBM Licensed Programs: Application Development Products
• New data types: Several data types have been added to RPG IV. These include:
– Floating point: This data type provides the ability to have a single field that can hold
both extremely small and extremely large numbers. It improves integration with
OS/400 database and improves inter-language communications in an ILE
environment, specifically with C and C++ languages.
– Signed and unsigned integer: These data types allow numeric data to be stored in
binary format, while avoiding the conversions to and from packed format required with
the binary data type, and allowing the full range of data that can be stored in an
integer or unsigned field. They improve inter-language communication in an ILE
environment, specifically with the C and C++ languages.
• Freedom from indicators: Programmers can define individual data structures to hold
the indicators used with externally-described WORKSTN and PRINTER files. In
addition, most operation codes formerly requiring resulting indicators now allow
resulting indicators to be omitted, with the information formerly provided by the
indicators now provided through built-in functions like %EOF and %ERROR.
ILE RPG/400 consists of the following RPG compilers:
• ILE RPG-IV
• RPG/400
• IBM System/36-Compatible RPG II
• IBM System/38-Compatible RPG III
• ILE RPG-IV Previous Release Compilers
V4R4 Enhancements
RPG IV is enhanced in V4R4 with the following functions:
• Ability to run ILE RPG programs in a multi-threaded environment
• Support for the UCS-2 (Unicode) data type
• Compiler options OPTION(*SRCSTMT) and OPTION(*NODEBUGIO) for debug
capabilities
• A EVALR operation code
• Support for 8-byte and 1-byte integer and unsigned integer
• Enhancements to integer fields
• Free-form FOR loop
• OVERLAY(*NEXT) keyword
• A LEAVESR operation code
• A control specification keyword OPENOPT(*NOINZOFL|*INZOFL)
• Ability to initialize character variables by INZ(*USER)