Re: VS Code and Editing Classic Source Members

Hello Richard,

My $.02…


Am 14.02.2021 um 22:06 schrieb Richard Schoen <richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

If you're using VS Code to edit source members form the IFS or still using SEU, here's a couple of useful bash scripts to quickly move library-based source members to the IFS and back for VS Code Editing.

I'm using vim, because it is able to transparently down/upload whatever is to be edited by FTP. Fortunately FTP isn't restricted to IFS on IBM i. Unfortunately, the latest major upgrade of vim broke the syntax highlighting files, I've found in the net and I can't see an obvious reason for it.

This gets you one step closer to eliminating SEU as your editor if you're not already using an alternative IBM i editing solution.

I still use SEU for quick edits, or when I'm doing something from scratch. The for the latter, the prompting function is incredibly helpful to get the positions right. (I'm a hobbyist using mainly V4R5 for development.)

I'm finding Bash to be the scripting language that CL could have become.

Bash alone isn't all too useful. All the external tools like sort, uniq, grep, sed, awk, cut, amongst others, are indispensable. Same goes with CL, though.

Clear drawback of shell (bash) scripts are:
- Multiple nested ' in a script are just awful to handle and most often require workarounds,
- handling a variable containing a text string with a $-sign provides endless opportunities for serious head scratching, also often resulting in workarounds.

But in general, I agree with you. Maybe REXX comes closer to shell than CL?

The inherent slowness of bash scripts (especially when calling external programs) is often compensated by the fact that they're really quickly written, so doing a one-time-run script doesn't hurt too much. Especially when doing the task manually is tenfold the time of writing and executing a script. :-)

:wq! PoC