RE: converting string to a numeric

Guys,

I love free format, just feels more natural to me.

Bob mentioned one of the two enhancements id like to see,

1. Create a free format equiv of move, movel, movea etc
2. remove the need to do /free, /end-free, just use the C-spec or lack of to
indicate whether its free format or not

cheers
Colin.W

-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Cozzi [mailto:cozzi@xxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: 28 July 2004 14:37
To: 'RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries'
Subject: RE: converting string to a numeric


RPG started out fixed, so whether or not it started out free is irrelevant. 
Some reasons the free-format stuff isn't 100% yet, is because it is new. For
example, when a new language, such as Java arrived on the scene, it had so
many shortcomings and eventually became better (although the idea of Java is
like saying English should be spoken by all humans in all countries... It
just doesn't make any sense to me at all, but I, as usual, digress. <g>) The
point is there is a lot of legacy in RPGIV/RPGIII's columnar instructions.
Granted there are some (many?) at IBM who think that the MOVE/MOVEL opcodes
should not exist (why aren't their equivalent in /FREE?) and those that
think the truncating numbers on an assignment should always cause an error.
Well, I could suggest that some people, way back when choose RPG and the
S/3x platforms because they were unlike all the other systems. That is they
did things in a way so that we could get the job of running business
applications done. 
I could go on, but it could turn ugly. :)
-Bo

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