It doesn’t matter about the packed data as long as the file has no fields defined (flat file). If you tried to copy a flat file to an externally defined file you may get problems if for example you have blanks or character data in the position of a numeric or packed field. If you copy from an externally defined file to a flat file you won’t have any problems.

The OS checks data that gets copied into externally described files and will issue error messages if the data being copied is invalid for the file field definitions. Flat files only (normally) have one character field (often with the same name as the file, which means you’d have to use a RENAME in your RPG if you want to use the file as externally described). Packed data is allowed in character fields, be aware that if you query or dsppfm a file with packed data in a character field the packed data may not be shown unless you display in hex mode (which you can’t do in query).

Regards,

Martin Gilbert.

I think you’re making it a bit too complicated. The following should do the trick. Notice that I put an A for add in the file spec for empoutf and an ADD on the output spec. I changed the write to use EXCEPT and the D (detail time) to and E (exception time) on the output spec. I removed the D specs completely and replaced the input field definitions with one field for the whole length of the record – the field is also used in the output specs.

FEmployee IF F 39 DISK
FEmpoutf O A F 39 DISK
IEmployee NS
I 1 39 data
/FREE
READ EMPLOYEE;
DOW NOT %EOF;
EXCEPT EMPOUTF;
READ EMPLOYEE;
ENDDO;
EVAL *INLR = *ON;
RETURN;
/END-FREE
Oempoutf EADD
O data 39

Hope this makes some sense to you. I can understand that the use of internally defined files can be quite confusing if you’re used to externally defined files. All this stuff comes from older (non-AS400) versions of RPG where externally defined files couldn’t be used.

If you come from a System/36 background like me, then internally defined files are almost second nature.

By the way CPYF is an AS/400 (CL) command. What I meant by using CPYF was that you didn’t really need to write a program at all for this. If you use CPYF you can copy data from one file to another – it’s a very powerful command which lets you select what data you want to copy, allows creation of a duplicate file if necessary, can clear existing data by using a replace option, etc.

Regards,

Martin Gilbert.