bif

Neat little trick using edit codes

This built in function is probably not new to most, but I found it very helpful this morning.  If the function exists, you may as well use it.

I had to pull a numeric field out of DB2 and convert it to characters while retaining the leading zeros.  I received a little tip on how to do this using the %editc BIF.  Note that shiptime is the DB2 field and chartime is the variable.

The “X” edit code is used to keep leading zeros.  Cute function.

/free

evalr chartime = %editc(shiptime:’X’)

/end-free