Re: **IFS**

Bob Cozzi wrote:
> I have a question...
> Does anyone want to access IFS files from within RPG?
> I don't just mean by prototyping the C/Unix APIs, but in a robust
> RPG-like manner?
> I'm thinking along the lines of ext files for storing simple values,
> perhaps as a replacement for data areas and control database files.
>
> Is this something that is important? A survey I took recently indicated
> that most people store HTML files as well as some type of data in the
> IFS.
>
> Bob Cozzi

Bob:  Actually, we already know the answer to this question.  Native
I/O support for IFS files was on the last RPG Enhancement Survey,
and it was indeed one of the more popular items.  (The results were
e-mailed out to all of the voters, including you.)  And so, we did
some investigation into implementing that function in V5R2.
However, you've probably already noticed that the function was not
actually implemented in V5R2.

First, I must ask you, why do you think calling the Posix API's is
not "robust RPG-like"?  Don't forget, procedure's were added to the
language to make calling API's like these easier, and so there's
nothing about calling them that's not "robust RPG-like".  (Maybe
it's not RPG II-like or RPG III-like, but hey, we're not programming
in those languages anymore, right?)

OK, why didn't we implement native IFS I/O in RPG?  First, we looked
at enhancing the file specs and I/O calc operations.  Problem is
that although the native file I/O matches quite nicely fixed-length
database records, it does not nicely match varying length records in
stream I/O.  Second, we looked at implementing built-in functions.
But since these would simply be wrappers to the Posix API's anyways,
we didn't see much point in that either.

Cheers!  Hans