Re: IBM overhauls iSeries for the long haul

["Keith Carpenter" <CarpCon@xxxxxxx>]

Steve wrote:
> which explains why rpgIII had all that useless stuff in it. SPECIAL files,
> matching records, ...

I'm no fan of the cycle, but matching record logic was quite useful.  I saw
many of these programs on the S/38.  Better database design has obsoleted it
today.  But there are people that still code cycle programs today for use
with OPNQRYF.

SPECIAL files had a use in RPGIII.  Before all the nice ILE built-ins, it
was very nasty to code string formatting functions.  Mostly this involved
using loops and arrays.   The SPECIAL file is really just an API interface
for RPG I/O.   By coding a simple SPECIAL file program to return the
excepted output buffer on the next read,  you could use the output spec edit
codes and edit words to format numerics into character fields.  I used this
for technique to for subfile records that required conditional formatting.


Keith