Last night was I was chatting to an old programming chum in Chicago. As you may be aware, for most people in the AS400/iSeries/IBM-i arena the term “old programming chum” automatically implies a gray haired old fart wearing frayed cords, cheap (but comfortable!) shoes and excessively dour facial features with a slightly “smarter than thou” […]
Continue readingIBM i , IFS , Programming
This morning I had an email from a blog subscriber ( Hi Rick! ) asking for a code tips on how to cleanup IFS file names to remove erroneous characters and/or malformed directory name slashes. Rather than reply with a plethora of programming options — here is an old, but functional, RPG code snippet that […]
Continue readingIBM i , Programming , SQL
A while ago I had a problem where I wanted to change the first two characters in a table and I used the very simple concat and subst operations to do it with SQL. Today, we had a slightly more complex requirement of updating text in the middle of a field using SQL, or in […]
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IBM i Authority is a wonderful beast with many layers of complexity. Like a big red onion, peeling back these layers is simple to do, but sometimes causes some tears, or occasionally full on sobbing and weeping. On the positive side, setting these layers of authority is pretty straightforward as long you stay focused and […]
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Upgraded our IBM i systems to IBM i V7.3 yesterday and so far everything is running nicely except for this one weird little glitch: some of the existing DDS WINDOW SCREENS are bombing with CPF4169 The device file does not contain an entry for screen size when they seem to have been quietly working for years, […]
Continue readingIBM i , Programming , RPG , SQL
Following on from my previous blog (basic email validation) I decided that it would much nicer to (a) have the regex stored in a data area so that we can easily play with it to try different validation scenarios and (b) lets have a shot at a much stricter validation because there is an official […]
Continue readingIBM i , Programming , RPG , SQL
There are lots of code snippets, example programs and long waffling discussions in internet land filled with pointy headed AS400, iSeries and IBM i programmer chaps (and chappettes) arguing about the best way to “validate an email address in RPG”. I know because I’ve read nearly all of them, as well as tried all the […]
Continue readingIBM i , Software Change Management , Turnover
Wow – that’s another long url title. I really wanted to call this “How To Check Out An Object From One Library And Promote It To A Different Library but keep the program source code line change dates” but that just seemed to ridiculously long. Why are we talking about this? We all know there are […]
Continue readingAS400 , IBM i , iSeries , Programming
What’s in a font? Lots of things make our life easier as IBM i Programmers. Working with a clean, easy to read 5250 terminal mode is one of the them. I’m a big fan of Mochasoft terminal emulator, but growing to love the new IBM i ACS (Access Client Solutions) with its multi-tabbed approach to […]
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