RE: Code and CL

Simon is correct, and I couldn't agree with him more.

I can't count the number of programmer I've met that use the || or <|
symbols.
Not only have I never been an advocate of them on readability
principles, I've used Windows-based editors for 8 years now and saw the
issue with downloading source to the PC years ago.

Bob Cozzi
cozzi@rpgiv.com
Visit the new on-line iSeries Forums at: http://www.rpgiv.com/forum

> -----Original Message-----
> From: code400-l-admin@midrange.com
[mailto:code400-l-admin@midrange.com] On
> Behalf Of Simon Coulter
> Sent: Friday, December 14, 2001 4:43 PM
> To: code400-l@midrange.com
> Subject: Re: Code and CL
>
>
> Hello Mark,
>
> You wrote:
> >2) The logical not character (SHIFT-6) shows up as a carat. This
character
> >is transferred to the source PF as a carat. I can't even get that
character
> >in a 5250 screen using SEU.
>
> You should ALWAYS use the symbolic values (i.e., *NOT, *CAT, *BCAT,
*TCAT)
> and NEVER use the caret ^, vertical bar | and angle brackets <>.  The
^|<>
> characters are variant which means their representation in hex is not
the
> same in different codepages.  Since CCSID encoding is intended to
maintain
> the visual representation of the character an ASCII caret is converted
to an
> EBCDIC caret during transfer to the Host.  The problem is that the
EBCDIC
> caret is not the same hex value as an EBCDIC not symbol.  Thus the
compile
> fails.
>
> This is not only a problem between PC and Host but since CL is
partially
> interpreted using the ^ || >| <| symbols can cause execution failures
if
> your CL code runs on an AS/400 with a different primary language.
>
> Besides *NOT, *CAT, *BCAT, and *TCAT are FAR more obvious in intent
and self
> documenting.
>
> There is more to this problem regarding the fact that the caret is not
a not
> symbol, it just happens to occupy the same keyboard location, so
different
> keyboard mappings will cause different effects.  However, I've made my
point
> -- don't use the variant characters!
>
> Regards,
> Simon Coulter.
>
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