RE: IFS in RPG

Man, Buck!

an extra couple shots of espresso in our latte this morning? (no disrespect
intended ;-)

<Buck said:>
Presume that the compiler can dynamically open any stream file we have.
Presume that the compiler can use OPEN/CLOSE/READ/WRITE and even UPDATE to
change the pseudo-records size. (why not, it's my fantasy!)
Presume that the runtime has decoders for all the popular formats, and even
allows me to register a decoder for formats that aren't (yet) included with
OS/400.
Presume that the compiler can dynamically call the proper runtime decoder
and throw errors when the program's receiver variable/structure/new data
type can't match the decoded file at runtime.
Presume that everything I said about 'decoder' applies to 'encoder' as
well.

What did I miss.... let me see now...  Oh.
<lots and lots of really neat and unneeded stuff snipped>

whoa there big fella, stop right there!   no one's asking for even a
fraction of this stuff.  We would really need nothing more than what's
specified on the CPYFRMSTMF and CPYTOSTMF commands.  and don't tell me to
'just use the commands', they are unwieldy, and tough to decifer errors
from, plus why would anyone use the api's if the commands were better?

No need for updating a file. (read in entire file and rewrite it if that's
what you're after).  We'd only need to use the %error() bif to catch
conversion errors.  We aren't asking for a thousand features.  as far as
processing multiple different types of files, no one wants that either - we
know what our files are going to look like, and will work all of that out
in testing.  Even if you did want to process an excel file, parse the damn
thing once you get the data in your program, not in the read bif or opcode.

It's not an all or none proposition is it?

regards,

Rick