Re: RPG V?

Jon Paris wrote:

On Jan 8, 2010, at 10:24 AM, Hans Boldt wrote:

...

Steve's desire for pre-compiler changes is probably too late - that
window of opportunity was definitely missed as far as SQL was concerned.
But some notion of opening the language to permit it to be extended by
others has always interested me. It wasn't possible with the old
compilers - but with today's Service Program procedure based model it
becomes a far more practical possibility. "Open I/O" is a beginning - I
suspect that how much further we go may well depend on how well adopted
that feature is.

Hindsight is always 20/20. A different pre-processor architecture
occurred to me long after I left RPG that would have satisfied SQL's
concerns, and offer the flexibility of the OS/2 inner/outer
architecture: The compiler could provide the ability for other
components to register call-back functions for handling embedded /EXEC
statements. That is, component XYZ would registers its callbacks with
the RPG compiler, and whenever the compiler sees something like "/EXEC
XYZ STUFF;", the statement would be passed whole to that component. If
they need to know variable definitions, it would call back into the
compiler for the details. The component would then return back some RPG
code, which would be parsed and processed by the RPG compiler.
Additional exits could also be provided for various other points in the
RPG module.

But like you said, it's too late for SQL. But possibly not too late for
XYZ.

Regarding "Open I/O", I'm looking forward to seeing what it is. I'm
hoping it's something that lives up to the hype, and not just some
warmed-over SPECIAL file support (which seems to be the consensus among
those of us who haven't signed an NDA).

Cheers! Hans