Jon Paris and Susan Gantner

IBM i Consultants, Developers, Educators and Apostles

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Jan. 25, 2021

To say that RDi is highly customizable is putting it mildly. There are hundreds of preferences to set as well as many other types of customizations that can be done. I’m often asked about my favorite preference settings and other customizations. This…

Jan. 18, 2021

IT Jungle

Guru: Fall Brings New RPG Features, Part 3

In my previous tips (see Related Stories below), I covered the new BIFs and op-code options added with this release. This time I’m going to discuss a couple of new compiler options that focus on the conversion of character data to numeric. While you…

Jan. 11, 2021

IT Jungle

Guru: Fall Brings New RPG Features, Part 2

In my previous tip I outlined some of the new features added to RPG with the Fall 2020 release. In this and the following tip I will be covering the features that I ran out of space for in that first one. This time I will cover the new FOR-EACH loop…

Dec. 7, 2020

IT Jungle

Guru: Fall Brings New RPG Features

In this time of pandemic we could all do with a little cheering up. So “Santa” Barbara (a.k.a. Barbara Morris) and the elves at the IBM Toronto Lab have delivered an early Christmas present. Available now via PTF for 7.3 and 7.4, there are some real…

Nov. 16, 2020

IT Jungle

Guru: RDi V9.6, Part 10 – Debugger Enhancements

Here I go again – more enhancements to talk about that have come about in RDi V9.6. This time, it’s the debugger that has been enhanced. The 9.6.0.7 fix pack included some new goodies for the debugger. Both of the enhanced features were popular…

Oct. 12, 2020

IT Jungle

Guru: Dynamic Arrays Come To RPG – Limitations, Circumventions, And More

In my first two tips in this series I covered the basics of automatic sizing arrays and variable sized arrays. In this final part am going to discuss some of the current limitations in this support and the facilities IBM has put in place to help…

Aug. 17, 2020

IT Jungle

Guru: Dynamic Arrays Come To RPG – The Next Part Of The Story

In my first tip on this topic I covered the automatic sizing option (*AUTO) for the new dynamic arrays. In this tip I am going to look at the second option (*VAR), which allows the programmer to directly control the capacity of the array, growing and…

Jul. 20, 2020

IT Jungle

Guru: Dynamic Arrays Come To RPG

Some 12 months ago, when the 7.4 release was announced, I wrote the Guru Tip “7.4 Brings New RPG Goodies” describing the features of 7.4 that were also available on 7.3. I said at the time that I would return later to discuss the 7.4-only features.…

Jul. 6, 2020

IT Jungle

Guru: RDi V9.6, Part 9 – RDi Helps with Refactoring Code into Procedures

I’m guessing that you have some RPG code in your shop that’s desperately in need of some refactoring. I have yet to visit an RPG one that wasn’t in that position. If by chance you don’t know what I mean by “refactoring” or why you may need it, I…

May. 18, 2020

IT Jungle

Guru: RDi V9.6, Part 8 – Better Ways To Copy Members, Manage LIBLs, and Find Preferences

If my crystal ball had told me just how many RDi V9.6 fix packs there would be and, more importantly, how many great new features would be added, I might have thought differently about starting a numbered series! Looks like I may well make it into…

May. 11, 2020

IT Jungle

Guru: RDi V9.6 Part 7 – Zoom in, Know Where You Are, Refactor Constants and More

RDi enhancements just keep coming. Since my last installment in this series on V9.6 there have been more fix packs and quite a few new features. Here in part 7 I’ll cover refactoring character constants, two ways for RDi to indicate “you are here”,…

Mar. 4, 2020

IT Jungle

Guru Classic: Overlaid Packed Data In Data Structures

When I re-read this tip while looking for a “Classic” candidate, I was reminded that the underlying issue it addresses, namely how data is actually stored in an RPG program, is one that many RPG programmers don’t really have a firm grip on. That…

Mar. 4, 2020

IT Jungle

Guru Classic: More iSphere Goodies

This Guru Classic tip is my third in a series exploring the iSphere RDi plug-in. In this tip I’ll cover two additional ways in which iSphere expands the RDi toolset. There are a few details that I’ve updated in this new version of the tip due to…

Mar. 2, 2020

IT Jungle

Guru: Practicing Safe Hex in RPG

In this tip I’m going to address a question that arises regularly on RPG-oriented Internet lists, namely: “Is there an easy way to convert a character string to its hexadecimal equivalent?” One answer, of course, would be to write your own routine…

Feb. 5, 2020

IT Jungle

Guru Classic: A Bevy Of BIFs — Updates

In my previous tip I returned to the “Bevy” series to tell you about the latest addition to the family: %ScanRpl. Shortly after completing that tip I realized that there have been a number of more recent BIFs such as %SubArr and some enhancements to…

Feb. 5, 2020

IT Jungle

Guru Classic: Looking For Stuff With iSphere

In my last Guru Classic tip I introduced you to the iSphere RDi plug-in. In this tip I’ll cover a few other features in iSphere that I find very useful. This time I’ll focus on a couple of options there that can help you search for things and…

Jan. 20, 2020

IT Jungle

Guru: RDi V9.6, Part 6 – The New Object Table Gets Even Better

RDi V9.6 seems to be the gift that keeps on giving. I started this series about this release of RDi almost two years ago. You may have thought my last (fifth) tip in the series was the last on this subject, but it turns out there’s still more! I…

Jan. 8, 2020

IT Jungle

Guru Classic: A Bevy Of BIFs – %ScanRpl (Scan And Replace)

This gem of a BIF was introduced with the V7.1 release and so was not available some five years ago when I wrote my original Bevy series of tips. Now that most active development shops are running V7.1 and later it seems a good candidate for a…

Jan. 8, 2020

IT Jungle

Guru Classic: iSphere Plug-in Expands RSE/RDi Toolset

My series of three Guru tips on the free iSphere plug-in first appeared in 2015. Since I still find that most RDi users haven’t heard of it, I’ve decided to repeat the series as Guru Classics. I’ve made a few updates to this first one in the series…

Nov. 25, 2019

IT Jungle

Guru: Code Coverage via CL Command

This is my third tip on using RDi’s Code Coverage support. In the first tip, we explored setting up a test run using Service Entry Points (a.k.a. SEPs). In the second one, I covered how to create a configuration for the test run. Here we’ll see how…