One array that stores the element names and one array that stores the (to text) converted field values.

...and...

In php or other language you can use assosiative arrays.

Generally, no.

Using PHP as the primary example, many such languages are "interpreted" rather than compiled. (Yes, there now are some "compilers" for PHP, but they are necessarily platform-dependent. Further, there can be major differences between interpreting source to byte-code and actual "compilation".)

Languages intended to be interpreted generally have a much easier time with this kind of thing. Compiled procedural languages often have no such ability, usually because they don't make sense in their optimized environments.

And when it gets turned into a question that appears to be about dynamic references to variable names (i.e., "field data from an RPG-data structure"), it goes in an unlikely direction. The field names themselves aren't even available to the compiled program (except potentially in debug mode when debug data is left in the module).

But the question is about a very specific technical problem that might have no solution. Instead, please see if you can rephrase it into a business problem. What is the activity that you need to perform? I.e., what are you trying to do? Maybe a resolution can be seen from a different angle.

As for the question portion about "(transformed in to characters)", see the EVAL-CORR (Assign corresponding subfields) as a potential starting point. The target DS could, for example, use ZONED subfields to achieve initial character representations of numeric values.

Tom