Example: Change and retrieve a data area

This example shows how to change and retrieve a data area.

The following is an example of using the Change Data Area (CHGDTAARA) and Retrieve Data Area (RTVDTAARA) commands for character substring operations.

This example:

Creates a 10-character data area named DA1 (in library MYLIB) with initial value ABCD5678IJ
Declares a 5-character variable named &CLVAR1
Changes the contents of data area DA1 (starting at position 5 for length 4) to the value EFG padding after the G with 1 blank)
Retrieves the contents of data area DA1 (starting at position 5 for length 5) into the CL variable &CLVAR1

To do this, the following commands would be entered:

DCL VAR(&CLVAR1) TYPE(*CHAR) LEN(5)
.
CRTDTAARA DTAARA(MYLIB/DA1) TYPE(*CHAR) LEN(10) +
     VALUE('ABCD5678IJ')
.
.
.
CHGDTAARA DTAARA((MYLIB/DA1) (5 4)) VALUE('EFG')
RTVDTAARA DTAARA((MYLIB/DA1) (5 5)) RTNVAR(&CLVAR1)

The variable &CLVAR1 now contains 'EFG I'.