RPG Book from fixed form to free form

[FromOraToRPG]

I am a Oracle programmer, now working in RPG. Most of the code I am dealing with is fixed format, I am more comfortable with free form and now I am trying to find any reference books which TRANSLATES fixed format RPG code to Free form RPG, Please advise ?

Thanks in advance.

[jj_dahlheimer]

If you use RDI it has a convert to free form option which will convert for you what it can. Not all operation codes have a direct free form equivalent. Either google or the IBM manual will help, https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledg...d/sc092508.pdf chapter 19.

[Barbara Morris]

The RPG manual lists the free-form equivalent of each opcode.

This article mentions some of the tools you can get for converting from fixed form to free form: http://www.ibmsystemsmag.com/ibmi/de...g/free-format/

[LucyB]

I work in a small shop of RPG programmers working on a modernization initiative in which we are all committed to writing new code in free format and to converting older code to free format where we can. We've found the book Programming in ILE RPG by Bryan Meyers and Jim Buck, published by MC Press, to be invaluable. Most chapters have a section called "Navigating Legacy Code" that might prove helpful. Also, a good quick reference to the various "old" op codes would be The Modern RPG IV Language by Robert Cozzi, Jr. However, I suspect that obtaining a tool that will convert legacy code will be a huge benefit to you in time savings. We've found RDi to be a great editing tool and it handles conversions to free format well.

[JonBoy]

I am a Oracle programmer, now working in RPG. Most of the code I am dealing with is fixed format, I am more comfortable with free form and now I am trying to find any reference books which TRANSLATES fixed format RPG code to Free form RPG, Please advise ?

Thanks in advance.

While the books and article mentioned by others are good there are (in my opinion) better options.

First the free-form conversion in RDi is limited to only calculations - it does not handle declarations. Not only that but it cannot handle an awful lot of things - for example no MOVEs are converted.

To my mind your best option is to get your hands on one of the full free-form conversion tools. Within RDi you can use Linoma's RPG Toolbox features - which only costs $500 to add to an existing Toolbox license. And the toolbox is cheap to start with and your shop may well have it already. http://www.linomasoftware.com/products/rpg-toolbox

Also you can use Arcad's Transformer http://arcadsoftware.com/products/ar...ctoring-tools/ but that is a little more expensive - although very cheap usually if you own other Arcad tools.

Last, but not least, there are Craig Rutledge's free tools which you can find here http://www.jcrcmds.com/ at the top of the page.

As far as books are concerned, probably the best one for pure conversion issues is Jim Martin's book on free-form RPG https://www.mc-store.com/products/free-format-rpg-iv - make sure you get the third edition.

[Viking]

I can vouch for the Linoma Toolbox conversion tool... it does a great job and gives you some choices for addressing how certain things should be handled during conversion. I also have the latest edition of Jim Martin's free-form book, and also the Bryan Meyers and Jim Buck book mentioned above, and I find them both valuable.