Re: Should RPG programmers be dynamically allocating memory? was: the advantages of garbage collection

Adam Glauser wrote:

I'm not entirely convinced that few programmers need to allocate memory. How often do we RPG programmers put hard limits in our programs, simply because using a dynamically sized structure is tricky?

I contend that you have one of two situations: you can either live with hard limits or you can't. If you can, you pass an array. If you can't, you call repeatedly until you get an EOF indicator. Either pattern works in RPG splendidly.

I do love the EGL self-extending array, but I don't have to manage that memory myself.

Perhaps this is part of the reason we don't have as many tool libraries as are available in other languages, as lamented by Tom Liotta in the "RPG is Dead" thread.

Nah. We don't have tool libraries because RPG isn't cool. The percentage of people like Scott who have the knowledge to write a tool library, the access to a machine to write it on, the motivation to write a good library and the time to do so is a small number in any community. But if you apply that percentage to the Java programming community, you still end up with thousands of programmers willing to share. In the RPG community, well what you see is what you get <grin>.

Joe