RE: global MONMSG to catch everything

[Buck Calabro <mcalabro@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

My favourite example of this (from real-life code):

CALL RATEPGM
MONMSG (CPF0000 RPG0000)
CLRPFM RATEINPUT

When RATEPGM doesn't work because of a library list problem, the CL program
merrily keeps right on going and clears the input file.  Without telling
anybody that a problem occurred.  Now we have no input data and no output
data, either.

Buck Calabro
Aptis; Albany, NY
mailto:Buck.Calabro@aptissoftware.com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peter Dow 
> Sent: Tuesday, October 05, 1999 5:54 PM
> To:   MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
> Subject:      Re: global MONMSG to catch everything
> 
> > BUT PLEASE BE CAREFULL!  What you are talking about doing is VERY
> > dangerous!  And unfortunately, the shops that have the biggest
> > problems with unhandled escape messages are then ones that SHOULD NOT
> > USE THIS TECHNIQUE!  This is because if you can't trust your
> > programmers (or vendor) to produce software that runs clean, how can
> > you trust them to SAFELY implement something like a global MONMSG
> > CPF0000????
> 
> Amen! It's been my experience that this technique usually ends up covering
> up errors and making it very difficult to correct a problem that could be
> corrected on the spot, rather than having to figure out first where the
> error actually occurred, by which time it is no longer possible to get a
> program dump which is usually invaluable in finding decimal data errors,
> and
> second, figuring out what's required to rerun the job.
> 
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