Fetching numbers into CHAR/VARCHAR

I4GL and FGL format numbers in a different way when fetching direcly MONEY, DECIMAL column values into CHAR/VARCHAR variables.

With IBM® Informix® 4GL, when fetching SQL column values from a MONEY or DECIMAL column into a CHAR(n) or VARCHAR(n) program variable, string-to-number conversion rules apply, based on the DBMONEY or DBFORMAT environment variable.

With Genero BDL, only DBMONEY is taken into account: DBFORMAT is ignored.

In such case, best practice is to fetch MONEY or DECIMAL data into a program variables defined with the same data type. This can be easily achieved with a DEFINE LIKE statement, using on the SQL column types of a schema file:

SCHEMA stock
...
DEFINE amount LIKE order.ord_amount