Differences Between RPG III and the original RPG/400

[JohnLewis]

Having got a pile of untruths and fake news out of Chat-GPT, I thought it's time to ask the human beings:

What, if anything, were the differences between the System/38 version of RPG III and the original RPG/400 on the AS/400 when it was released in 1988?

I feel like I remember there being some minor differences, but can't remember the details.

[Scott Klement]

You don't seem to have the terminology right.

RPG III is a language. Much like C, Java, and Python are languages.

There was a compiled called RPG/38 (or later, System/38 compatible RPG III) which was one possible implementation of the language. RPG/400 was another implementation of RPG III. There were several more implementations on various other platforms. Just as there was Borland C, Microsoft Visual C, ILE C and GNU C, and they are all C, The RPG/38 and RPG/400 compilers are both RPG III.

The primary differences between the 1978 RPG/38 and 1988 RPG/400 is simply new features that were added to the language over the intervening years. Also, RPG/400 compiled to code that was native to the AS/400, wheres RPG/38 created code for the System/38, but could be run in the System/38 environment.

[JohnLewis]

Thanks! Were there no actual language differences (opcodes, syntax, etc.) between the RPG on S/38 and the RPG on AS/400 at the point when the AS/400 was launched (1988)? I feel like there were, but maybe that's because we only went onto AS/400 in 1989 and by then it had already changed.

Also (related) was SQL available on the S/38, whether embedded in RPG or elsewhere? Again I feel like it wasn't and we certainly *claimed* it as a major justification for moving to AS/400, but as I only worked on S/38 for just under a year, my memories of it are limited.

I certainly DO remember AS/400 query (WRKQRY) being much better than its equivalent on S/38 and various CL commands were changed/added, of course (e.g. WRKACTJOB rather than DSPACTJOB).

[Scott Klement]

Yes, there were differences... 10 years had passed, enhancements were made.

I'm not going to try to list the differences.