RE: **IFS**

I agree with Scott's post completely.

Phil


> -----Original Message-----
> From: rpg400-l-admin@midrange.com [mailto:rpg400-l-admin@midrange.com]On
> Behalf Of Scott Klement
> Sent: Thursday, July 11, 2002 1:34 PM
> To: rpg400-l@midrange.com
> Subject: RE: **IFS**
>
>
>
> On Thu, 11 Jul 2002, 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?
>
> First of all, the APIs are quite robust.
> If by "RPG-like" you mean by using F, I and O specs, then ABSOLUTELY NOT.
>
> 1) F/I/O spec files do not work well with variable length data.  You
>      could work around this by making "length" be one of the fields
>      that you read/write, but it would be awkward.  (Though, I've
>      already done that with ICF...)
>
> 2) F/I/O specs have to be hard-coded at compile time.  This is already
>      something awkward with database files, but it would be 10 times
>      worse with stream files.   Usually with stream files you want
>      to ask the user for a filename to open, and a filename to save as,
>      etc.  You don't necessarily know at runtime how many files you'd
>      have open at once...
>
> 3) F/I/O specs cannot be made local to a subprocedure.
>
> 4) Stream files need to be given longer filenames than would logically
>      fit on an F-spec.   I'd really hate to see someone create an
>      OVRSTMF command that has to be executed to specify the filename
>      before opening the file on the F-spec.   I mean, this is already
>      awkward with databases, let's not make it this way with stream
>      files, too!
>
> In fact, I'd LOVE to see the native database access move away from the
> nasty F/I/O support, and instead use an API similar to what we have with
> stream files.   (Yes, I know I could call the C _Ropen() style functions
> for this, but then other RPG programmers complain about my code being
> hard to follow.  If it were part of the language, they wouldn't complain!)
>
>
> > 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.
>
> This is VERY important.  In the future, it'll be much more important than
> data areas, control files or simple HTML documents.
>
> However, a much better solution would be for IBM to distribute prototypes,
> structures, and constants for the UNIX-type APIs in the QSYSINC library as
> they do for other APIs, rather than make IFS access limited and awkward by
> putting it on the F, I and O specs.
>
> If they are going to add op-codes or BIFs, they should make them similar
> to the APIs, rather than similar to the existing RPG file support!!
>
>
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