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Programming / CL

Generating a report from an IBM i CL program isn’t straightforward, because in CL there is no direct way to write to a spool file. This article provides the Print Line (PRTLN) command, which allows simple, direct printing from a CL or CLLE program, including page control and headings.

By Sam Lennon

Sometimes it's just convenient to print directly from CL, and that's where the PRTLN command is handy. The CL language wasn’t designed to create reports—report writing is a strength of RPG. You can, of course, create Query/400 or QMQRY objects and then call them from a CL program to produce a report, but then you have extra objects to manage.

Read more ...

Date arithmetic in CL programs is limited and lacks the simplicity and scope found in RPG. This article provides a command that brings RPG date capabilities to CL programs.

By Sam Lennon

Date handling and arithmetic in RPG is superb, capable, and straightforward. (I've written about it before in Calculate Begin and End Dates for Any Month and here in RPG IV Legacy Dates Cheat Sheet). But when it comes to dates in a CL program, there are limited capabilities, and you need more coding.

Read more ...

Is there a foolproof way to enter single quotes (') in a Control Language (CL) program variable without having to double them?

By Sam Lennon

Nearly everyone knows that to embed a quotation mark in a CL variable you have to double it. To putNAME='SMITH'in a variable, you have to enter'NAME=''SMITH'''. Enter an uneven number of quote marks and the CL prompter will attempt, and nearly always fail, to fix if for you, which can make entering code challenging and sometimes frustrating. What if we could use a double quote ("), and then easily replace each with a single quote programmatically?

Read more ...

Ted Holt shows you how to code an IBM i program that performs start-up tasks when a user signs on to the system

By Ted Holt

Editor’s note: This article is excerpted from chapter 15 of Complete CL: Sixth Edition, by Ted Holt.

So-called sign-on programs (more accurately called initial programs) are special programs that run when a user signs on to the system. The sign-on program is indicated in the user profile’s initial program (INLPGM) attribute. With INLPGM (*NONE) in a user’s profile, the system doesn’t run any program at sign-on and shows the initial menu immediately. If the user has a value other than *NONE in the INLPGM attribute, the system runs the indicated program before it presents the initial menu. With INLMNU(*SIGNOFF) in a user’s profile, the user is signed off, when the user’s sign-on program ends.

Read more ...

Ted Holt explains how to add command prompting code that pauses a CL procedure and waits for the user to enter parameter values

By Ted Holt

Editor’s note: This article is excerpted from chapter 13 of Complete CL: Sixth Edition, by Ted Holt.

Selective prompting is one example of an advanced technique. With selective prompting, you activate the prompter for a command from within a CL procedure. In other words, a CL procedure can contain an instruction that causes the procedure to stop, display the command prompter for a particular command, and wait for the user to enter parameter values and press the Enter key. When the user presses Enter, the CL procedure continues to execute.

Read more ...

Ted Holt explains how to use the trim, type-conversion, and case-conversion functions in your IBM i CL programs

by Ted Holt.

Editor's note: This article is excerpted from chapter 4 of Complete CL: Sixth Edition.

This article explains some of the various manipulations you can perform in CL to combine two or more constant or variable values: specifically, the trim, type-conversion, and case-conversion functions.

Read more ...

There are times when you can't code around a system message, but at least with this technique you don't have to sit around and wait for it.

joe plutaWritten by Joe Pluta

Can't or won't?

           

OK, chances are that if you try hard enough you can manage to code around nearly any system message. But there are times when the amount of work required simply isn't practical. I'll give you a real-world example that I've run across on many occasions over the years and show you a relatively easy way to get around the problem, as well as an additional trick that can help in some stricter environments.

Read more ...

MONMSG is a powerful tool, but sometimes even MONMSG needs a little extra help, and here's an example.

joe plutaWritten by Joe Pluta

One of the great features of the System/38 was the Control Program Facility, or CPF. And one of the coolest things about CPF was the fact that any command you could enter from the command line could also be compiled in a program. This is different from interactively reading a script file, which is nice in its own way but isn't exactly the same thing. Scripts need more attention, especially in error handling; typically, an error causes some kind of alert to pop up on an operator's console, and then they have to decide how to deal with it. Compiled CL, on the other hand, not only understood errors but provided a very powerful tool to handle them, the MONMSG command.

Read more ...
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