RE: Strange result with exponents...

Thank you Doug, see inline if ya wanna.

| -----Original Message-----
| From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
| [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Douglas Handy
| Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2004 8:52 PM
| To: RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
| Subject: Re: Strange result with exponents...
|
|
| JT,
|
| >You can disagree all you want as to whether it's "best practices".  I'm
| >defining "best practices" by usage.
|
| I'm not denying it is (or at least was) widespread, but
| widespread adoption does
| not make it a "best practice".

Problem of definition of terms, then.

| It arguably makes it more
| recognizable to RPG
| programmers simply because it was commonly used,

That's generally considered a "best practice", afaik.

| but it has
| always been a lousy
| practice.

And there are Always trade-offs, right?...;-D

| It forces exception processing when there is no
| justification for
| doing so.

I know very well the technical negative.  I do Not know if that even applies
these days.  As Al Barsa said a while back on a thread considering (iirc)
whether packed-decimal or binary arithmetic was faster.  He said (approx),
the machines are SO fast, this is really a moot point.

Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't.  Similar to date fields.  (Which,
is my understanding, adds a fairly tremendous amount of overhead if your DB
is filled with them, as opposed to storing them in the DB as numeric, and
converting when date math is needed.)

Obviously, most programs are I/O bound to the greatest extent.  But with
good caching, then all of a sudden programs DO become CPU bound.

| >it would be a mini-Y2K to eliminate all usage of it.
|
| I would have hoped Y2K processes *would* have eliminated all
| usage of it !!

You hope in vain, in at least some shops.  I seriously doubt that Most
companies that chose to update current software (as opposed to trading out
to a packaged-SW solution to the Y2K problem) could afford that luxury.
Icbw, of course.

| >Furthermore, if you don't want any wars about how lousy RPG is
| now that it's
| >just a clone of C, then don't start one.
|
| You are the one who asked how to increment a number in free
| format.

On the contrary, I pointed to a specific thread that was almost entirely
about inventing a Rube Golberg solution to this problem.  I think many will
recall that particular thread.  And the point that I got from that thread is
that people don't always look for the most appropriate solution to the job,
but try to fit a square peg (and I can look up the thread and provide
examples, if needed) into a round hole.

Maybe it's just my lousy opinion, but I find /Free much like a GOTO.  It
encourages such kinds of bad solutions.

| I was just
| responding your question with what I think is the appropriate answer.

"Appropriate"...?  (See my preceeding paragraph...;-)  I think this is hard
to define a-TALL precisely...  This reply struck me as less confrontational
than your last post.  Hopefully, mine is too...:-D