Re: Missing from RPG/LE

["David Morris" <dmorris@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Joe,

In your examples I don't follow how a date should be "=" to a range.  I could 
see IF range(dateentered: 980101: 980131), but you can do that today.  I think 
range, etc. would be better supported as new operators.  After all we don't 
have %EQUAL().  It may be a problem implementing because someone could already 
have a field called "range" or "in" in a program.  I would like to see this 
done, but there are other areas that would be higher priority to me.

David Morris

>>> Joe Teff <jteff19@idt.net> 09/24 10:04 PM >>>
I appreciate how much more readable code is in RPG/LE than any other flavor of
the language. There is one area though that I think a much better job could have
been done. I think that having a %Range and %List BIFs would really help
cleanup coding.

  I would write:

     C                                  If              DateEntered >= 980101 
and
     C                                                  DateEntered <= 980131

  Instead I could write

     C                                  If              DateEntered = 
%Range(980101 980131)

  Or I would write:

     C                                 If              ItemStatus <> 'D' and 
ItemStatus <> 'O' and
     C                                                 ItemStatus <> 'P'

  Instead I could write:

    C                                  If               ItemStatus = Not 
%List('D' 'O' 'P')

   Or, even better:

    D Deleted                               C                              'X'
    D Obsoleted                           C                              'Q'
    D Prototype                            C                              'S'

    C                                  If              ItemStatus = Not 
%List(Deleted Obsoleted Prototype)

This code would become even more readable and thus more maintainable. In fact, 
many
of the BIFs available in SQL look like good possibilities.

I really do like what has been done to the language and find that writing in 
RPG3 (aka
RPG/400) is becoming as untasteful as writing in RPG2.

Joe Teff


+---
| This is the Midrange System Mailing List!
| To submit a new message, send your mail to MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com.
| To subscribe to this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-SUB@midrange.com.
| To unsubscribe from this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-UNSUB@midrange.com.
| Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com
+---