Re: What bugs you about KLISTs in RPG IV?

Dave Shaw wrote:
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joel Fritz <JFritz@sharperimage.com>
> 
> >I like the free form idea, but I wouldn't mind being protected from
> >terseness abuse.
> 
> Isn't that what COBOL is for? <grin, duck, and run>
> 

If the field is the current outstanding balance for a customer, in RPG
it would be something like this:

        CMARBL  or  ARCSBL or ARBAL or...

In COBOL it *SHOULD* be:
        
        outstanding-balance of current-amounts of customer-record

but alas, in many COBOLS it turns out to be:

        curr-bal of cust-rec  -or, worse yet-  cmarbl

Of course it could be ccb in ANY language, C, RPG, COBOL, Pascal, PL/I,
and then there is Basic:  b.

No language has a lock on terseness.  The IBM midrange systems forced it
with 6 characters.  10 is better, but still no good.  The SQL DDL only
permitted 18, still better, but not good.  DB2 V6 gives us 30.

So what's my point?  You can't be protected from terseness abuse by any
language or data base.  You CAN be forced into it by either.  The 400
comes from a long history of terseness.  It's not going to change based
on any changes in the RPG compilers.

-- 
===========================================================
R. Bruce Hoffman, Jr.
 -- IBM Certified AS/400 Professional System Administrator
 -- IBM Certified AS/400 Professional Network Administrator

"The sum of all human knowledge is a fixed constant.
    It's the population that keeps growing!"
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