ILE RPG Programmer's Guide
Advantages of passing by value or read-only reference
Passing by value or read-only reference allows you to:
- Pass literals and expressions as parameters.
- Pass parameters that do not match exactly the type and length
that are expected.
- Pass a variable that, from the caller's perspective, will not
be modified.
One primary use for passing by value or read-only reference is
that you can allow less stringent matching of the attributes of the
passed parameter. For example, if the definition is for a numeric
field of type packed-decimal and length 5 with 2 decimal positions,
you must pass a numeric value, but it can be:
If the prototype requires an array of 4 elements, the passed parameter
can be:
- An array with fewer than 4 elements. In this case, the remaining
elements in the received parameter will contain the default value
for the type.
- An array with 4 elements. In this case, each element of the received
parameter will correspond to an element of the passed parameter.
- An array with more than 4 elements. In this case, some of the
elements of the passed array will not be passed to the received parameter.
- A non-array. In this case, each element of the received parameter
will contain the passed parameter value.
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