Asking BOB to rename SOURCE using %METADATA%

Renaming your source members using %METADATA% and the newer IBM i code‑naming standard of OBJECT-the_description.type

If you’ve ever opened a source file and found a member named something like PGM1, TEST, or the classic FIXTHIS, you already know why this matters. Modern development demands clarity, consistency, and a naming convention that tells you what an object is before you even open it.

That’s where our new pattern comes in:

Clean. Predictable. Searchable. And, best of all, BOB can learn to do it for you.

In this lesson, you’ll see how to:

• Use %METADATA to extract meaningful information from your source

• Train BOB to automatically rename members to match your standards

• Apply the OBJECT-DESCRIPTION.type pattern across your codebase

• Avoid the chaos of legacy naming once and for all

By the end, BOB won’t just be editing your code, he’ll be enforcing your standards, keeping your library tidy, and helping your team move toward a modern, professional IBM i workflow.

After you have imported your DDS Source into your IFS location you might notice that some (or many) of the source has basic file names of just the object and type:

We can ask BOB to investigate all these files to find any embedded METADATA, or even to pull the description from text inside the source file, and rename each file itself.

Clean + Readable = GOOD!!

Simply ask BOB like this:

Rename all source files using TOBi naming style (OBJECT-this_is_the_description.type) and extract the description from the file contents. If the file contents have a %METADATA% description use that and delete the internal METADATA lines. If no metadata is found, then calculate the description from the file contents.

Press ENTER and let Uncle BOB go through  your codebase.

FIRST PASS - correctly renaming with METADATA and COMMENTS 

After a few minutes he did a great job and renamed around 80+% of my source code:

SECOND PASS - renaming and fixing sentence case 

apply TOBi file naming standards to all file in the /database/tables folder. This means uppercase before the - sign and title case after with _ word seperators

Once again, a minute went by and my source repository was around 95% correctly renamed: saving me many hours of manual work.