RE: Use of DUMP in production programs, WAS: RPG enhancement suggesti on

[Buzz Fenner <nick_exxon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I agree with John, I would like to see the programmer maintain control and 
choose whether a dump produced referenced and/or unreferenced fields.  In 
the past, seeing unreferenced field values could have given me insight into 
problems I was actually having as a result of bad data getting into a 
program.  Rarely when I'm debugging a program is it in a "standalone" 
situation, but instead is actually part of a processing group (of programs).


>From: "John Taylor" <john.taylor@telusplanet.net>
>Reply-To: RPG400-L@midrange.com
>To: <RPG400-L@midrange.com>
>Subject: RE: Use of DUMP in production programs, WAS: RPG enhancement 
>suggesti       on
>Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1999 11:26:02 -0600
>
>
>I would like to continue to see unreferenced fields included in a dump. The
>additional information that they provide has proved usefull to me in the
>past. However, I have no problem with something like DEBUG(*NOUNREF), where
>the programmer could override this behaviour.
>
>
>John Taylor
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-rpg400-l@midrange.com [mailto:owner-rpg400-l@midrange.com]On
> > Behalf Of boldt@ca.ibm.com
> > Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 1999 8:48 AM
> > To: RPG400-L@midrange.com
> > Subject: Re: Use of DUMP in production programs, WAS: RPG enhancement
> > suggesti on
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Buck wrote:
> > >Generally speaking, I'd rather that the end-user not see "white
> > messages."
> > >I would much rather trap the error myself, produce a post-mortem dump 
>and
> > >tell the user to call support for help.  My software looks much more
> > >professional telling the user to call support than if an "Invalid array
> > >index" error pops up.
> >
> > How professional does your s/w look if the user has
> > to call support for help?  (Sorry, couldn't resist!)
> >
> > I do see your point, though.
> >
> > A simple, one-liner for us would be to ignore the
> > DEBUG keyword when deciding whether or not to
> > extract an input field.  As a result, unreferenced
> > fields would not appear on the dump, even with
> > DEBUG(*YES) coded.  If a field is not used within
> > a program, do you really care about its value?
> >
> > How about a quick vote on some alternatives:
> >
> > 1) Don't show unreferenced fields on dump.
> > 2) Keyword DEBUG(*ALLOW) which would allow the
> >    DUMP opcode to run, but unreferenced fields
> >    wouldn't be extracted.
> > 3) Opcode DUMP *FORCE to force a dump to occur
> >    even if DEBUG(*YES) is not coded.  (Again,
> >    unreferenced fields would not be extracted.)
> >
> > I'll add the results of the vote to our proposed
> > enhancements list.
> >
> > Cheers! Hans
> >
> > Hans Boldt, ILE RPG Development, IBM Toronto Lab, boldt@ca.ibm.com
> >
> >
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