Susan Gantner
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Guru Classic: Automatic Or Static Storage?
January 16, 2019 Susan Gantner
Author’s Note: This tip was first published in August 2008. One thing that has changed in the intervening 10-plus years is that I find a lot more RPGers regularly using subprocedures now. Something that hasn’t really changed much is that many of those using subprocedures still don’t fully understand the behavioral differences between automatic and static storage. The concepts and handling of automatic versus static storage haven’t really changed. So the only modifications I’ve made for this reprise of the tip is to update the style of the code example.
If you write RPG subprocedures, you should know about the …
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Guru: Ready Or Not! Part 5 Of Big Changes In RDi V9.6, Edit/Browse Toggle, PDM Perspective, More
October 22, 2018 Susan Gantner
In this tip I’m going to cover a few of the “smaller” features implemented in V9.6.0.3 and …0.4 that I think you should know about. I’ll cover my favorite — the Edit/Browse toggle feature — as well as some enhancements to Block Nesting. I’ll also follow-on to my last tip about the PDM affinity features in the Object Table — the PDM perspective — plus a few more little goodies.
A quick hint for you on the subject of exactly what new features became available within RDi and when: If you ever want to see a complete list of new …
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Guru: RPG Sorting and Searching, A 7.2 Update
September 5, 2018 Susan Gantner
Author’s Note: This is the second update I’ve done to a tip I originally wrote back in 2008. In 2010, I updated the code to use SORTA with array data structures. Here in 2018 I’m updating it once more — this time to use free-form declarations in place of the D specs, including a more obvious way to code the nested data structure used in some of the examples and references to more recent tips for handling very large arrays. The 2010 version was entitled “. . . A 7.1 Update.” I’ve renamed this one as “. . . A …
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Guru: Three Little Words That Simplify Debugging
August 29, 2018 Susan Gantner
Author’s Note: The original version of this tip first appeared in March 2007. That was three renames ago for the toolset we now know as RDi. (It was WDSC then). Although RDi has seen many significant enhancements in the intervening years, not much about starting a debug session has changed. But the number of RPGers now using RDi for editing their code has grown dramatically, and many recent converts still struggle with getting a debug session started. So I think this tip bears repeating — with some name changes, updated images and relevant functional updates here and there.
I had …
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Guru: A Bevy of BIFs – %Dec to the Rescue
August 1, 2018 Susan Gantner
Author’s Note: This tip was first published back in 2009. I’ve updated the code examples here to use free format declarations. In addition I’ve added the potential use of %ScanRpl, which didn’t exist at the original publication date.
More and more in RPG applications these days, it seems we need to process data that comes from “the dark side.” Translation: from a non-i system. This data could be coming from a browser screen via an RPG CGI program, from a CSV (comma-separated values) flat file, from an XML or JSON document, or myriad other ways. One thing these dark sources …
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Guru: Ready or Not! Part 4 of Big Changes in RDi V9.6, PDM Affinity with Object Table
July 16, 2018 Susan Gantner
I’m beginning to feel like a broken record — still more new RDi features with V9.6. I’m excited that there are so many great new features to talk about. In this tip, I’ll cover the primary feature added with fix pack update V9.6.0.3 — enhancements to the Object Table for PDM affinity.
To me, the enhancements to the Object Table view to make it look and feel much more like PDM are the most significant in the release. There are some other smaller — but still very welcome — enhancements as well, which I’ll cover in a later tip.
Why …
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Guru: Ready or Not! Part 3 Of Big Changes In RDi V9.6, Compare/Merge, Code Coverage, and More
June 4, 2018 Susan Gantner
This is the third in my series of tips on RDi V9.6. In this one I’ll cover the new compare and merge support, along with improvements to code coverage and a few other smaller enhancements in V9.6. I originally thought this would be the last in the series, but IBM recently made available a new point release that introduced enough new features to mean I’ll be adding at least one more tip.
Compare And Merge
The ability to compare the content of two source members is not new to RDi, but with V9.6 the facility now offers the option to …
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Guru: Ready or Not! Part 2 of Big Changes in RDi V9.6, Hover and Annotations
April 23, 2018 Susan Gantner
If you’re one of those RDi users who doesn’t bother updating to the latest releases, listen up. I’ll bet that at least one of the new features in V9.6 will entice you to update. In Ready Or Not, Big Changes in RDi V9.6! Part 1, Key Behavior, I covered some RDi key behavior changes. Here I’ll explore some of the more noticeable — and to me anyway, more useful — features: enhanced hover text and new annotation support.
Hover Text
RDi has had hover text for variables and procedures for a while now. You could hover over an item …
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Guru: Ready Or Not, Big Changes in RDi V9.6! Part 1, Key Behavior
February 26, 2018 Susan Gantner
Version 9.6 of RDi has many new features. If you’ve upgraded your RDi, you have undoubtedly noticed some of the enhancements, because most of the new features are enabled by default. Just in case you’re not a huge fan of some of those features, most can also be disabled to make things work as before if you know where to look.
In this series, we’ll take a look at some of the new features and how to enable and/or disable them. In this first part, we’ll study two new key behaviors and how to control them.
Many of the enhancements …
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Guru: How Do You Do That With RDi? Part 3: Complex Compiles
June 19, 2017 Susan Gantner
In an earlier tip I tried to convince RDi users to give up compiling in PDM because the RDi compile interface has the time-saving Error List to offer. I offered some tips that help me with my compiles in RDi. Here I’ll continue my “Compile in RDi” campaign by offering some additional ideas for those who have more complex compile processes.
There are two common issues I hear that keep people returning to PDM for their compiles. One is that their library lists aren’t set up correctly for the compile and the other is that they need to do something …
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