Re: X-Spec (was: "RPG isn't cool")

Carsten,

>I certainly do agree that it would be a good thing to have an option to
>automatically convert to CF, on the other hand I have a strong feeling
>that IBM won't build a utility to ease the conversion to the CF-specs.

It's fine with me it they don't -- you could whip up your own *very*
easily, and there would surely be shareware/freeware versions as well.
(Even if IBM provides one, there may be third-party versions which do
more, similar to the situation with CVTRPGSRC.)

>ILE and RPG/IV - even the best RPG/IV conversion tools I've seen so far
>are only capable of - more or less - replacing code line by line.

(snip)

> in the case of converting legacy
>programs the outcome I think will be closely related to the programs
>current state in this respect. Based on this assumption I'd say that -
>in this shop - the CF-specs would primarily find their way into new
>applications.

Of course the outcome would be nearly line by line the same as the
original design (aside from ading D-specs for field definitions).  But
what you would find is an *immense* improvement in readability of
existing code that uses structured opcodes.

That is in essence normally how I used RPG/free.  I would take
existing code, convert to /free, edit, convert back to /fixed (or is
that /broke?), then compile.  That may sound like extra work, but it
actually was very easy.  Even in 1990 I was using a PC for editing
(because it is *so* much better then SEU), and I just added an
extension to the editor so I could press one key and literally within
seconds have the same source reloaded in /free.  Another keystroke and
within seconds it was back to /fixed for submitting to a compile.
I'll admit that using a PC made this easier and faster than the AS/400
and S/36 ports of the RPG/free pre-compiler.  But you could use PDM
options to convert too; it just was slower than my 386 at the time.

The increase in readability was (is) astounding.  You might be
surprised how much it helps even old legacy code.  Based on my
experience with RPG/free, it is no big deal to learn to read any
source statement as: "opcode [factor1] factor2 result" instead of
"[factor1] opcode factor2 result", regardless of the opcode.

In my book, CF specs would find their way into virtually every program
I touched.  The first step should be auto conversion to CF, then
maintain it.  (This is not unlike those of us who convert RPG III to
RPG IV prior to doing maintenance.)

Doug


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