RE: A Smarter Free-Format Converter

I remember a lot of controversy about overflow when RPGIV came out.  A
lot of people didn't like overflow becoming a hard error. RPG Classic
allowed people to ignore it and they tended to do just that without
thinking about the consequences. Of course there are also things like
the date trick that use overflow intentionally.  

I could never see the wisdom in allowing overflow in the first place.
It leads to the sort of errors that may not be discovered for months.
Suppose your unit sales for your best selling item roll over and nobody
notices for a while. <g>  

One thing you might consider is doing only new development in free form.
It's instructive to convert a small program or two to get an idea of
what's going on, but there's a lot of stuff in old code that's better
suited to stay as it is.   

-----Original Message-----
From: wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Tyler, Matt
Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2004 2:33 PM
To: 'Websphere Development Studio Client for iSeries'
Subject: RE: [WDSCI-L] A Smarter Free-Format Converter

What you are not being told explicitly is that numeric operations of old
ignore numeric overflow and wrap around, where are the new form
operations (i.e., EVAL, FOR, etc.) do not.  They will halt a program in
numeric overflow.  I guess IBM thought it prudent not to create code
that could
crash when it did not before on what looks identical code.   You can
make
op-codes like ADD, SUB, etc. fail with numeric overflow if you desire
with a compile option TRUNCNBR(*NO) will treat all op-codes as the same
and generate overflow errors.  


You might consider buying the RPG IV converter from Linoma
(www.linomasoftware.com).  It has functionality that allows you to force
conversion of DO to FOR, etc.   Our manager almost prevented any of us
from
converting to RPG IV because of the numeric overflow issue.  It cause
very important programs to crash when the testing did not bring out the
overflow problem.  Linoma's tool has a feature you can setup conversion
defaults appropriate for you company and use them every conversion.  


Thank you,
Matt Tyler
WinCo Foods, Inc
mattt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: Bill [mailto:billzbubb@xxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2004 3:18 p
To: WDSCI-L
Subject: [WDSCI-L] A Smarter Free-Format Converter

I have used the Free-Format converter in WDSC 5.1.2 a couple of times
now and am surprised at some of the statements that are not converted:

Add 1 x
Should convert to  x += 1 ;     correct?  But it leaves it as fixed
format.

Z-add 1 x
Should convert to    x = 1 ;

Do 5 x
Should convert to   For x = 1 to 5 ;

Am I missing something here?

Bill


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