When calling a
program or procedure, you may sometimes
want to leave out a parameter. It may be that it is not relevant to the called
procedure. For example, this situation might arise when you are calling the ILE bindable
APIs. Another reason might be that you are calling an older procedure that
does not handle this particular parameter. If you need to omit a parameter
on a call, you have two choices:
- Specify OPTIONS(*OMIT) and pass *OMIT
- Specify OPTIONS(*NOPASS) and do not pass the parameter.
The primary difference between the two methods has to do with how you check
to see if a parameter has been omitted. In either case, an omitted parameter
cannot be referenced by the called procedure; if it is, unpredictable results
will occur. So if the called procedure is designed to handle different numbers
of parameters, you will have to check for the number of parameters passed.
If *OMIT is passed, it will 'count' as a parameter.