Changes to Gen runtime function SUBSTRDBCS in Gen 7.6

Products

• Gen
• Gen - Workstation Toolset

Issue/Introduction

There have been some changes to the way that the Gen runtime function SUBSTRDBCS works in Gen 7.6 GA and subsequent PTFs. This document describes the impact of those changes.

Environment

Release: 7.6 and later

Resolution

The changes

SUBSTRDBCS for all runtime except for Blockmode and Server Runtime on z/OS was changed in Gen 7.6 GA to count using "character" instead of "byte" for the arguments of starting position and substring length.

SUBSTRDBCS for Blockmode and Server Runtime on z/OS is still counting using "byte" in Gen 7.6 GA, but PTF RTM76011/QO93484 changed that to count using "character" (the PTF also changes runtime function SUBSTRMIXED to work in the same way, but currently there is no plan to change SUBSTRMIXED for other platforms).

Effects of changing to "character" instead of "byte"

Before applying the PTF (Bold character is DBCS):
e.g. substrdbcs("1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E",9,4) will return "5 6"

After applying the PTF (Bold character is DBCS):
e.g. substrdbcs("1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E",9,4) will return "9 A B C"

The following table summarizes the SUBSTRDBCS functionality for Gen 7.6 before and after the PTF installation. The later Gen 8.x releases also have the same functionality as Gen 7.6 with the PTF installed.

Packaging	.NET	Java	Windows GUI C Application	Online/Cooperative Server
			Windows GUI C Cooperative Client	z/OS/COBOL	Windows/C	Unix/C
Before apply PTF	character	character	character	Byte	character	character
PTF	None	None	None	RTM760111	None	None
After apply PTF	character	character	character	character2	character	character

 

¹ RTM76011 is superseded by Runtime Consolidation PTF RTM76035/RO17214.

² This is also the new functionality for SUBSTRMIXED (z/OS only). For distributed platforms SUBSTRMIXED counts in bytes for Gen 7.6 and continues to do so in later Gen versions.