Upcoming RPG enhancements for 7.4 and 7.5

[Barbara Morris]

The RPG enhancements with PTFs for 7.4 and 7.5 are announced today. The PTFs will be available later.

See https://ibm.biz/rpg_cafe#announcement

- Convert parameters to strings with OPTIONS(*CONVERT).
Idea https://ibm-power-systems.ideas.ibm....as/IBMI-I-1547

- Concatenation built-in functions %CONCAT and %CONCATARR
Idea https://ibm-power-systems.ideas.ibm....as/IBMI-I-3008

- CHARCOUNT NATURAL mode to handle data correctly that has different-sized characters, such as UTF-8 and mixed SBCS/DBCS.
Idea 2128: https://ibm-power-systems.ideas.ibm....as/IBMI-I-2128
Note that the title of the Idea mentions %LEN, but %LEN is not changed. Instead, there is a new %CHARCOUNT.

Here's the link for all the TR announcements:
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/ib...1-enhancements
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/ib...7-enhancements

[Barbara Morris]

The RPG enhancements with PTFs for 7.4 and 7.5 are available today.

See https://ibm.biz/rpg_cafe#announcement

7.4:
ILE RPG Runtime: 5770SS1 SI81729
ILE RPG Compiler, TGTRLS(*CURRENT): 5770WDS SI81749

7.5:
ILE RPG Runtime: 5770SS1 SI81740
ILE RPG Compiler, TGTRLS(*CURRENT): 5770WDS SI81801
ILE RPG Compiler, TGTRLS(V7R4M0): 5770WDS SI81819

Warning: The runtime PTF is needed on any system where a program is run that uses the charcount-natural support.