Passing CHAR parameters to functions

Simple data types such as CHAR are passed by value to functions (this means the value of the caller variable is copied on the stack, and then copied back into a local variable of the called function.) When large data types are used, this can introduce a performance issue.

For example, the following code defines a logging function that takes a CHAR(2000) as parameter:

FUNCTION log_msg( msg )
  DEFINE msg CHAR(2000)
  CALL myLogChannel.writeLine(msg)
END FUNCTION

The function is then typically used by passing a log message as parameter:

CALL log_msg( "Start processing..." )

When performing this call, the runtime system copies 19 characters on the stack, calls the function, and then copies the value into the local variable. Since the values in CHAR variables must always have a length matching the variable definition size, the runtime system fills the remaining 1981 positions with blanks. As result, each time you call this function, a 2000 character-long variable is created on the stack.

By using a VARCHAR(2000) (or a STRING) data type in this function, you optimize the execution, because no trailing blanks need to be added for these types.

Consider also using VARCHAR instead of CHAR for large database columns. Due to the Informix® SQL history and the Informix VARCHAR(255) limit, there may be CHAR() columns when the storage size required is more than 255 bytes. For more details, see Trailing blanks in CHAR/VARCHAR.