Re: RPG Cycle

LOL James you just reminded me of a funny story that happened a few years
back...

someone wrote a program with nothing but a select block of code that
never set on LR or did a return...of course they beat themselves up for a
long time before they asked someone else why it looped endlessly...thank
you cycle....(P.S. no it wasn't me...i was just the guy they asked..and
laughed loudly!)

Thanks,
Tommy Holden



James Lampert <jamesl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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Re: RPG Cycle






Level breaks, O-specs, and such, them's hard. I freely admit that I
haven't been able to make constructive use of them (beyond putting LR in
the "Level" column on a statement to be executed only after The Cycle
has completed). But level breaks are only part of The Cycle, and O-specs
are peripheral to it.

The concept of an implicit DO-loop enclosing the entire main program,
with implicit reads of optional primary and secondary files, controlled
either by the primary file (if used) or by explicitly setting the LR
indicator on in response to some other event (as in using The Cycle as
the event loop of an interactive program) is simplicity itself.

If a programmer undertakes to learn RPG, and can't figure out the easy
part of The Cycle, and how to make constructive use of it, he or she is
in the wrong line of work. If formal instruction in RPG fails to fully
cover level breaks and O-specs, at least in the advanced class, then
whoever designed the curriculum is in the wrong line of work.