RE: Need for separate Input and Output Areas in Display File

[Winchester Terry <terry.winchester@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joe Pluta [mailto:joepluta@PlutaBrothers.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 10:40 AM
> To: cobol400-l@midrange.com
> Subject: RE: Need for separate Input and Output Areas in Display File
>
>
> > From: Winchester Terry
> >
> > Well, I think ILE/RPG has some pretty neat stuff that COBOL
> > does rather poorly.  Too bad the best features of both
> > languages couldn't be merged together :)
>
> Of course, the idea behind ILE is that you CAN merge the
> languages, at least to some extent.  I don't know if you can
> nicely segment the pieces - for example, with all the wonderful
> BIFs, ILE/RPG now is a decent string handling language.  Can
> you invoke ILE/RPG procedures from COBOL the same you can in RPG?

I believe the only way you can do this is via bound Service
Programs -- but I'm not versed in that area. Of course, just
calling an RPG program is dead simple (just like CL).

> That way, you might have an editing routine in RPG that
> returns a formatted string.  Personally, I'm partial to
> RPG's display file handling; I might use RPG for my skeleton
> and also for various service procedures (accessing APIs,
> for instance, or the string handling I mentioned) and then
> write much of the business logic in COBOL.
>
> Interesting stuff, lemme tell ya.
>
> Joe

I wished Cobol had better string handling. The String/Unstring
statements work pretty well if you understand but they can
become quite complicated.  Having some special "intrinsic
functions" like RPG would be nice :)

The language is great for Business Logic because of its
general readability.  One of the accountants was looking over
my shoulder the other day commenting on some code and agreeing
to a change that he wanted.  I wasn't very familiar with the
program, but it was nice having 2 heads thinking about it :)

Terry