RE: IFS in RPG

I don't think bifs for open, read, and write would be a bad thing, but one
of the things ILE was supposed to do for us was to give us the ability to
extend the language by using stuff that's outside of RPG but already there
and standardized.  For a lot of things a set of prototypes that can be
copied into an RPG program would be just right.  If people can learn to use
bifs, they can learn to use pre-prototyped routines that exist outside RPG.
I'd even settle (if I really had to) for API documentation that followed the
CEE model showing the equivalent data types for parameters in each AS/400
language.  I'd rather have language specific "include" files.



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peter Dow [mailto:maillist@dowsoftware.com]
> Sent: Friday, July 12, 2002 2:18 PM
> To: rpg400-l@midrange.com
> Subject: Re: IFS in RPG
>
>
> Hi Doug,
>
> You make a good argument that the field parsing should be
> separate from the
> file i/o and record parsing.  But I still would like to have
> the IFS file
> i/o standardized by IBM, not by hundreds of different service programs
> wrapping the API's.  Since you and other API proponents seem
> to agree that
> using the API's is easy to do, why can't the compiler team do
> it for us
> under the covers, thereby standardizing it?
>
> And actually, I think Hans answered that awhile back,
> pointing out that even
> adding simple things can be a big project for them.  Still,
> if we don't keep
> them (the compiler team) busy, they'll all drift away to play
> with Perl,
> AWK, Java, etc. since RPG will be boring again.  While adding
> the IFS file
> i/o might be boring, I'd think a %SPLIT, %UNSTRING, or %MATCH
> bif would be a
> bit more interesting.
>
> Regards,
> Peter Dow
> Dow Software Services, Inc.
> 909 793-9050 voice
> 909 522-3214 cellular
> 909 793-4480 fax
>
>
>
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