Length function in Progress 11

I can't put my finger on it right now, but this was a change between 10.2B and 11.0. IIRC, there was a behaviour change release note added for this recently, within the past couple of years. Check the 11.4 and 11.5 release notes. I'll see if I can dig it up.

What do you expect the length of an integer variable to be?

The length function applies to string, raw or blob and can return the length in character units, bytes or columns.

By default, the unit of measurement is character units.

In V11.4 length() works with any data types like:

length(var) = length(string(var)).

Thanks Guys.

But can someone please provide the any link which explain all these new changes in OE 11 or latest.

It is scheduled for adding to the doc in 11.6. Apparently this behaviour also existed in 10.2B for handling values that could only be determined at runtime e.g. LENGTH(BUFFER-FIELD:BUFFER-VALUE) or LENGTH(WIDGET-HANDLE:INPUT-VALUE). In 11.0, this was extended to all circumstances.The LENGTH doc will reflect something like this:

As of 11.0, the ABL LENGTH() function now handles non-character datatypes e.g. LENGTH(10), where is a literal integer. The returned value is the length in characters of the value when represented in the ABL's default display format for that datatype. e.g the default format for an INTEGER is "->,>>>,>>9", so 10 would be represented as "10", resulting in LENGTH(10) returning 2. The default format for a LOGICAL value is "yes/no", so LENGTH(yes) or LENGTH(true) would return 3.

I cannot find a release note explaining this change.

when would one want to have that?


> On Sep 3, 2015, at 10:42 AM, George Potemkin wrote:
>
>[collapse] From: George Potemkin
> Post: RE: Length function in Progress 11
> Posted in: Forum
> Link: https://community.progress.com/community_groups/openedge_development/f/19/p/20013/71026.aspx#71026
>
> In V11.4 length() works with any data types like:
> length(var) = length(string(var)).
>
>
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Recently logged defect PSC00339768 is also related to this discussion. In OpenEdge 10.2B and earlier, using the LENGTH function on a MEMPTR raises the compilation error mentioned earlier ( "** Incompatible data types in expression or assignment. (223)" ). In 11.0 and up no error is raised, but the function returns 0 no matter what the size of the MEMPTR actually is.

'The returned value is the length in characters of the value when represented in the ABL's default display format for that datatype. e.g the default format for an INTEGER is "->,>>>,>>9", so 10 would be represented as "10" '

That is not according to the current actual behavior. It returns the length of the *unformatted* string representation.

"disp 1234567 length(1234567).." shows a length of 7 - thousands seperators from the default format aren't included.

In light of this forum question, and the bug Roberta referenced, we have been looking at this change to the LENGTH() function.

The correct way to get the size of a MEMPTR is GET-SIZE(), as documented.