I have written this RPGLE code having a DS defined with overlay keyword and some of its subfields are varchar fields.

The source code is as follows:

     D ds1             DS                                             
     D  fld1                         10A   varying   //4+1+4 = 9                 
     D  fld2                          4A   varying overlay(fld1)      
     D  fld3                          1a   overlay(fld1:*next)        
     D  fld4                          4a   varying overlay(fld1:*next)
      /free                                                           
       fld1 = 'abcdefghij';                                           
       return;                                                        
      /end-free                    

Line 1: Declare a DS named DS1.
Line 2: Declare subfield named fld1 of 10 varchar.
Line 3: Declare subfield named fld2 of 4 varchar and overlays fld1 storage area.
Line 4: Declare subfield named fld3 of 1 character and overlays *next available storage area in fld1.
Line 5: Declare subfield named fld4 of 4 varchar and overlays *next available position of fld1.
Line 6: Start of /free block to write rpg-free code after this line.
Line 7: Evaluate fld1 = ‘abcdefghij’;
Line 8: Return from program.
Line 9: End of the free block by specifying /end-free block.

DS has 2 varchar fields and the declared size is 10, I get the following error during compile.
*RNF7303 30 1 Subfield defined with keyword OVERLAY is too big;
specification ignored.

then I realized that varchar had a variable part of 2 bytes which stores varchar variable actual length. So, I have 2 Varchar fields overlaid and each requires 2 bytes. So the total length would be = 4+2+1+4+2 = 13 bytes i.e. varchar(11) instead of varchar(10). Since varchar(11) means (11+2 = 13).

Therefore, I declared the subfield fld1 as 11 varchars, and the program now compiles successfully.

D  fld1                         11A   varying  

Below is the output that I received:

EVAL ds1 
FLD1 OF DS1 = 'abcdefghij ' 
FLD2 OF DS1 = 'abcd' 
FLD3 OF DS1 = 'e' 
FLD4 OF DS1 = 'hij ' 

My expected output was:

EVAL ds1 
FLD1 OF DS1 = 'abcdefghij ' 
FLD2 OF DS1 = 'abcd' 
FLD3 OF DS1 = 'e' 
FLD4 OF DS1 = 'fghi' 

In the subfield FLD4 of DS1, it’s picking the wrong value and not handling it correctly. Please suggest if we can use VARCHAR subfields with DS OVERLAY.