RE: Parsing CL comments

Simon Coulter wrote:

I thought I had tried this same form yesterday hence the third example
in my previous append but after seeing Charles' earlier response I
tried again and it failed with a syntax error. Your example above also
fails.

CPD0011 Qualifier missing from qualified name 'MYOBJ* '.
CPF0001 Error found on *N command.

The first /* must have either a leading or trailing space to be
considered a start of comment flag. Since a space starts a new token
and a space is not valid in a parameter value (unless quoted) then a
parser can "know" that a comment is not allowed at that point and
therefore interprets the /* as the start of a qualified name. Note
that when examining the above message the complaint is about missing
data after the closing slash which indicates that parser has accepted
the /*Shows as a valid qualifier for the first MYOBJ and has accepted
each of the remaining words as valid tokens. Thus this error must
occur very early in the parsing sequence before validation of the
tokens themselves occurs.

I'm inclined to agree in spite of the documentation "opportunity" at IBM.
But what Vernon said still nags at me... let me dig that up. Ah, here it
is:

WDSC/RDi doesn't do things exactly this way - if you
use the formatting. And it's not consistent. But often
it will put the comment right after the end of the command,
with a space after the '/*' - if you try to enter a space
before the leading indicator, it takes it out.

I don't have RDi so cannot test. But if I read that correctly, then this
product will build that "invalid" statement from your third example (and
from my latest two).

I've already done the programming for the "prior space required or start at
column 1" rule, and I'm happy enough with it without the Recursive Indecent
Parsing (er... I meant Descent) algorithms. But I will try to wrap my head
around that concept; looks tasty.

Dennis Lovelady
http://www.linkedin.com/in/dennislovelady
--
"The man with the best job in the USA is the Vice-President. All he has to
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