Thanks! (was: RE: Use of DUMP in production programs)

Hans wrote:
>How about a quick vote on some alternatives:
>
>1) Don't show unreferenced fields on dump.
>2) Keyword DEBUG(*ALLOW) which would allow the
>   DUMP opcode to run, but unreferenced fields
>   wouldn't be extracted.
>3) Opcode DUMP *FORCE to force a dump to occur
>   even if DEBUG(*YES) is not coded.  (Again,
>   unreferenced fields would not be extracted.)
>
>I'll add the results of the vote to our proposed
>enhancements list.

Colin wrote:
>Option 3) looks the friendliest and will not affect existing processing,
>so gets my vote.

Thanks everyone for your comments on this issue!
The vote seems evenly split between option 2 and
option 3.

After a bit of discussion with my colleague,
Barbara, we decided to go with a new operation
extender on the DUMP opcode.  This offers the
most flexibility:  You can code DUMP for
debugging purposes, and you can code DUMP(A)
to always produce a dump, even if DEBUG(*YES)
is not coded.

On further study, we decided NOT to add it to
our proposed enhancements list.  Rather, we
just decided to "do it".  A half an hour and
12 lines of code, and we added the function to
the compiler.  Now comes the hard part of the
work - the plan!

Cheers!  Hans

Hans Boldt, ILE RPG Development, IBM Toronto Lab, boldt@ca.ibm.com


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