Update – December 17, 2014
Thanks to a PTF there is now a much easier way to use the ALIAS names in your RPG programs than the way described below.
Read Using aliases can be simple.
![using alias in rpg](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT4L03pi1i_Mb2FfZx06UhHPUmLXadO0Hox5uzQMrwlZT47L4lMiWtDcjnKCchZMJXIplPVO477bdGW7PEsswv8yhU-lPlMuNc9oB9ieOVCMEQUrTLQOeSCbRZenrYJDd-GNEGHKyWh4ty/s200/rpg.png)
The ALIAS keyword in DDS has been around for many, many years. I first used it in a programming environment where most of other the programmers used Cobol. They explained that if I added a ALIAS keyword to any files I created then they could use the longer alias name rather than the field name. I have to admit that the ability to use a field or variable name that was longer than six characters greatly appealed to me. This was the days of RPGIII and I had to deal with field names like J4UEEC for "End user currency", rather than the alias END-USER-CURRENCY that the Cobol programmers could use (you have to use the underscore in the alias name and the Cobol compiler translate it to a dash). The other thing I was jealous of the Cobol programmers was the Data division being the only place to define program variables.