Legacy RPG Printing on IBM i: OUTPUT Specs and EXCEPT in Action

If you’re curious about the nostalgic world of AS400 RPG programming, come with me and let’s dive into the art of printing reports using OUTPUT Specifications (O-Specs) and EXCEPT operations in RPG.

This video should help IBM-i newbies, and maybe even veteran coders working with IBM i systems, breaking down a piece of code from 1993 that’s still relevant in many legacy environments still running old AS400 and iSERIES program code.

We are going to walk through a classic RPG program that reads a journal file and generates a wide-format audit report. Looking at how O-Specs define the structure of an internally defined print file (QPRINT) and how EXCEPT operations control the printing of headers, details, and footers. You’ll see the code in action, first in the traditional SEU editor and then in the more modern Visual Studio Code, highlighting the contrast between old-school and contemporary development environments. We will also touch on handling overflow indicators to manage page breaks and the use of parameters to toggle extra detail in the report.

With a touch of irreverance (including a rant about a less-than-stellar iced coffee), I hope you enjoy this dive into some “ancient” RPG code.

I hinted at a follow-up video to convert this fixed-format code to free-format RPG, so stay tuned!

Whether you’re maintaining legacy systems or just love geeking out over retro tech, this video is might be interesting?! I hope!? Or maybe if it’s just to realise that making ones own iced coffee is always better than buying chemical sludge from the supermarket! hint: name rhymes with FIDDLE.