Re: CL code formatting and programming etiquette

I use the CL prompter heavily, so that kind of predicates how CL looks.

However, I do like to see CL indented. Years ago the late Ernie Malaga of MC Press wrote a REXX based reformatting command the did a really nice job of indenting. (The only issue I has with it was that right hand comments tended to wrap when indented and spoiled the layout. I solved this for my code by not using right hand comments.)

The caveat was that the CL needed to be fully prompted with the keywords, but since I prompt everything, it worked great for me.

I'm not a REXX expert, but I did manage to bring Ernie's program up to (mostly) V5R4 syntax, (Though frankly, I'm not real happy with the way I made the changes.)

Where I am now we are at V7R1, with a wide selection of inherited code styles from 20 years of in-house development, so I've tended not to use it. And I try not to write particularly complicated CLs anyway, but there are times when I will indent a temporary copy of an existing program just to re-assure myself that I am understanding the syntax.

Others have said that RDi and RDP do a better job of indenting. They are slower than SEU, but they do cache commands, so over time you may find they speed up. However, I still don't think they indent as well as Ernie's REXX program did.

I believe that iSeries Network has a style guide, largely without keywords, that they follow for published code. But if you use the prompter it is an awful lot of work to reformat your code to this standard. Maybe they have a reformatting program that they use?

Sam