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Due to processing by IBM, this request was reassigned to have the following updated attributes:
Brand - Servers and Systems Software
Product family - Programming Languages
Product - Business Developer
For recording keeping, the previous attributes were:
Brand - Rational
Product family - Design & development
Product - Business Developer
The argument that a character variable always has a length is not relevant for this RFE. As already stated, string variables can be empty and have zero length. This RFE is about EGL substrings in general, regardless whether source or target is a string or char variable. The two types can be assigned to each other anyway and the type will be cast automatically.
Currently, the runtime exception is thrown even when both source and target is a string variable. That makes no sense. When the target is a char variable and the result is shorter, it will be padded with blanks automatically, so that can be done even when the substring length is zero, in which case the target char variable will become all blanks.
Of course the current restriction can be circumvented by coding a substring function, but that would have a much bigger performance impact than just an extra if statement in the generated COBOL code, which would only be needed when any of the substring indices is variable.
Java and JavaScript already support zero length (sub)strings, so in those environments there should not be any performance impact.
This has been reviewed by development and the request is being rejected. For a Character variable, it will always have a length as there is no such thing in EGL as an empty character field. It may have a value of all blanks, but it still has its defined length. String datatypes can be empty and have zero length.
As a potential workaround, it is felt that a function could be written when needed to check the lengths and return the desired values. Loose typing is available for CHARs or it could use Strings. The use of the .bytes function for a character field could also be used. For assistance on a possible workaround, please work with your contact in EGL development.