Re: Module source naming schemes

"
Hello Scott,

As long as the new public (exported) procedure is added at the end of the 
other public procedures in the service program I believe you can change the 
order of the exports in the current signature.  What you cannot do, unless you 
rebind everything, is change the order of the public procedures in the service 
program.

I have public procedures at the start of my service programs and private 
procedures at the end.  Whenever a new public proceduer is created it goes at 
the end of the current public section, immediately before the private section.  
New private procedures can go anywhere in the private section.

I also add new exports to the end of the current signature in the BINDER 
source because I'm cautious but I don't believe that is necessary.  The 
binding step associates an ordinal number with each procedure and that is what 
is used to invoke the procedure.  Moving the location of a procedure will 
change its number.  The BINDER source simply determines which procedures are 
visible outside the service program.

In fact, you can do what IBM do (at least for those LPPs that follow the 
rules).  You'll notice that most IBM service programs have a signature that is 
the same as the name of the service program.  They never need to support *PRV 
signatures because the signature never changes -- even when new procedures are 
added.  In this case you would not be able to change the order of the BINDER 
source but would have to add new exports to the end.  That is, of course, much 
better than EXPORT(*ALL) yet avoids the maintenance of many levels of 
signatures.  You just have to ensure that the order of the procedures in the 
service program never changes and that if the interface to a procedure changes 
in an incompatible manner you rename the old procedure, but leave it in place, 
and create a new procedure at the end of the publice section with the old name 
and a new set of parameters.

Regards,
Simon Coulter.

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