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My Informix 4GL program core dumps with no error message or gets SQL error -4339 whenever I execute it.

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Someone asked me to debug their Informix 4GL report that core dumped with no error message whenever they executed it.

Well - after many hours of debugging and research, I discovered they had a PRINT statement in their report that had a "USING" clause, but the mask on the "USING" did not have quotes around it.

For example, instead of:

• the CORRECT way
  • PRINT COLUMN 10, my_number using "#####.&&"
• they had the INCORRECT way
  • PRINT COLUMN 10, my_number using #####.&&

I just put in those double-quotes around the mask and it worked fine.

BTW, somtimes they got the Informix SQL error -4339 just prior to the core dump, but that also went away when adding the double-quotes.

I guess it would be nice if the 4GL compiler caught this instead of core dumping at execution time.

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