Talk:IBM RPG II

Cleanup
OK what needs doing ?

--Gibnews

The RPG II business language was very popular from 1977 through the mid-1990s. Perhaps the article should reflect this and discuss uses of RPG.

A number of opcodes such as BITOF/BITON, MLHZO/MHLZO, and so forth are defined in the article, but perhaps the article should include code samples describing how these obscure codes are used.

Auto report, copybooks, comments, overprinting, headers/footers, overflow, data structures, record types, detail time, total time, record blocking, external indicators, exception output, matching fields, Move Remainder, and arrays are all topics that should perhaps be explained in more detail. Why stop there? There is also half-adjust, resulting indicators, packed and binary fields, the Local Data Area, *STATUS, CHAIN vs. READE, and quite a few interesting techniques with the WORKSTN file, including how to capture the Roll Keys and how to process multiple requestors. ICF could be interesting. Timing out an inactive display could be interesting. Practical uses of a KEYBORD file or a SPECIAL device may interest.

Differences between RPG II and RPG III are potentially interesting. Why is an RPG III object much larger than a similar RPG II object? Why do you have to recompile the RPG III object just because you moved it to a production library? How come RPG III cannot compile a program if that object is in use? How come DDS must use RPG field names and RPG II-SDA does not require them at all?

RPG numeric fields are interesting in that they have definite size. When using a 2.0 numeric field, 99 plus 3 isn't 102, it is 2. Negative 99 minus 3 isn't -102, it is -2. Also, 3 divided by 2 isn't 1.5, it is 1.

Documenting an RPG II program can be difficult. What should be documented and why? Who will read the documentation?

Future versions of RPG introduced opcodes and abilities RPG II was never given; but in many cases, there's no need for tears. Using certain techniques, the RPG II programmer can pursue advanced goals. Learn RPG III and the others; but know what can be done with RPG II.

Jessemckay 08:01, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Other Implementations
I used RPGII on a Burroughs mainframe in the late 70's and early 80's. Quartic (talk) 18:03, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Content
I am rather surprised to see what was a pretty good article about my favourite programming language reduced to a stub. So have put the content back. --Gibnews (talk) 22:21, 11 May 2009 (UTC)