IBM AS/400e User Handbook Manual page 692

IBM Licensed Programs: Application Development Products
• Pointer support: RPG users now have the capability to operate on pointer-based
structures, pass pointers to applications written in other programming languages, and
call-system functions requiring pointers.
• Dynamic memory allocation: New operation codes allow pointer-based storage to be
dynamically allocated, resized, and destroyed.
• NLS support: RPG has improved the portability of applications, across systems with
different national language requirements. The user can specify numeric editing
functions, date and time editing functions, and national language sort sequence tables
to be retrieved from the job attributes at program runtime or to be defined at program
compile time.
• Full graphic data type support: RPG supports a graphic (2-byte) data type.
Character operations and string manipulations have been enhanced to recognize and
handle graphic data according to its 2-byte character length.
• Static call: Users can develop their applications in smaller, better maintainable
modules, and link them together as one program, without incurring the penalty of
dynamic call overhead. This facility, together with the Integrated Language
Environment provided by the system, improves the user's ability to write
mixed-language applications. The Integrated Language Environment programming
languages permits the binding of C, RPG, COBOL, and CL into a single program
regardless of the mix of source languages.
• Prototype calls: Programmers can code a prototype for a call in their definition
specifications. The prototype includes the name of the program or procedure, as well
as the information about the parameters.
• Multiple procedures per module: Programmers can write more than one procedure
in each module. Additional procedures, called subprocedures, have the following
characteristics:
– No RPG cycle
– They can declare automatic storage (storage that is not allocated until the procedure
is called)
– They can be called recursively
– Local variables and structures can be declared within the subprocedure
– The subprocedure can return a value, allowing the procedure to be called within an
expression
– Parameters can be passed by value, allow literals and expressions to be coded as
parameters, rather than the caller having to declare a variable to hold the parameter
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AS/400e System Handbook