Suppose you have values that you're converting between character and packed decimal, in both directions at various times. You're a middleman, so you don't know what the application is going to be using the values for.
For a non-negative value, packed decimal could be either positive or unsigned. What do folks usually do? Is it normal for code to actually care? That is, if we say "Heck with it, we can't tell, so we'll just mark it positive", is that likely to cause problems? Or is use of unsigned rare enough that this is essentially a non-issue? (Hint: I'd like that last to be the case!) Obviously a "sign=" value could be passed around with the value, but that kind of metadata isn't in the stream now, so I'd rather not add it. Any and all ideas gratefully accepted... ...phsiii ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
