packed & zoned both are used for numeric data types in rpg but if packed occupies 1 byte and zoned occupied 2 bytes then why don’t we use packed?

1955 pts.

Tags:

AS/400

RPG Data Fields

RPG/400

Storage capacity

packed & zoned both are used for numeric data types in rpg/400 but if packed occupies 1 byte and zoned occupies 2 bytes then why don't we use packed always considering system storage capacity?

Software/Hardware used:
AS/400

Asked: February 8, 2011 5:34 PM Last updated: February 8, 2011 10:29 PM

Answer Wiki

Last updated: February 8, 2011 6:21 PM GMT

Mariodlg2,790 pts.
History
Contributors
- Ordered by most recent
- Mariodlg2,790 pts.

Thanks. We'll let you know when a new response is added.

In my experience using packed decimal is good if you don’t interact with as400 from other plataforms.

I had troubles calling RPG programs from Java, transfers data over tcp that involves others operating systems and programming languages or managing data queues.

Regards

Discuss This Question: 1 Reply

TomLiotta Feb 8, 2011 10:29 PM GMT

If you are using the values for computations, then packed-decimal is a much better choice. If you are using the values for display purposes such as a product identifier, then zoned-decimal might be better. In general, the RPG language is going to take extra time to convert zoned-decimal values to packed-decimal every time the program inputs (or outputs) a record if the field is used in any kind of calculation unless you code data structures to control it. It's not largely different sending zoned or packed fields to ASCII systems when fields may be negative, so it doesn't matter much which of those are used. It's often best to create a VIEW or LF that presents the value in a more platform-independent way. Given the storage capacities of reasonably current systems, there are almost always better ways to manage space than to use packed-decimal when zoned is more appropriate. However, there might be rare situations where it makes a difference. I'd be interested in knowing about one. Tom

125,585 pointsBadges:

report