Jon Paris and Susan Gantner

IBM i Consultants, Developers, Educators and Apostles

All Articles
RDi
PHP
The Geezer's Guide to Free-Form RPG
Open Access
JSON
History of RPGIV
RDi V9.6

Jul. 20, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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…

Jan. 8, 2020

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…

Nov. 25, 2019

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…

Aug. 14, 2019

Guru Classic: The Efficiency of Varying Length Character Variables

Remember the bad old days when dinosaurs still roamed the earth and the only way to build strings in RPG involved playing silly games with arrays? Or worse still, obscure combinations of MOVE operations? Thankfully those days are far behind us —…

Aug. 14, 2019

Guru Classic: Everybody Likes Shortcuts! Part 1, Navigation

I wrote the original version of this tip a few years ago but I still find a lot of RPGers aren’t using keyboard shortcuts as much as I think they should be. Since shortcuts can make you so much more productive, I’m re-visiting this topic with a few…

Aug. 12, 2019

Guru: RDi Code Coverage Without SEPs

My last Guru tip provided an introduction to RDi’s Code Coverage tool that you can use to determine how complete your tests are. In that tip I discussed how to run it using Service Entry Points (SEPs). In this follow-on tip, I’ll continue the…

Jul. 22, 2019

Guru: How Thorough Was Your Last Test? RDi Code Coverage Can Tell You

When you’ve made changes to one or more programs, you test all the changes – right? And, of course, you also test all the rest of the code just to make sure you didn’t break anything else. Did you do that with your last set of changes? Did you test…

Jul. 17, 2019

Guru Classic: The New Basics — Indicators

The history of indicators pre-dates even the earliest versions of RPG and takes us all the way back to the old tabulating machines, perhaps even earlier depending on how broad a definition one uses. What is without doubt, though, is that indicators…

Jul. 17, 2019

Guru Classic: My Favorite Keyboard Shortcuts for RSE/RDi

When using RDi for editing my CL, DDS, RPG, or COBOL code, I find that I can save a lot of time by using keyboard shortcuts for functions that would otherwise require that I take my hands off the keyboard to use the mouse. So I thought I would share…

Jun. 19, 2019

Guru Classic: Giving RDi a Split Personality

A commonly asked question by RDi newbies is: “How do I view source in split screen like I can in SEU?” The answer is that you can’t do it exactly like SEU, but then why would you want to? The RDi editor offers far greater flexibility. The original…