Expanding Command Parameter Length

Here is a bit of well-hidden midrange folklore that has been handed down from programmer to programmer. This feature was documented in some obscure place in the S/38 manuals, and I'm not sure that the AS/400 manuals document it at all.

You can enter an ampersand (&) followed by one or more spaces starting in the first position of an input field on any command prompt to expand its length. The maximum length is 80 for qualifier and 512 for all the other parameters.

To enter a value even longer than the maximum prompt length, press F3 to return to the Command Entry display and enter the value in the command string without using command prompting. This can be very helpful when you're entering an expression through the prompter while editing a CL program.