RE: CF-Spec - another call for opinions

["John Taylor" <John.Taylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Colin Williams wrote:

> I beg to differ. Having to change source on an upgrade is a very big
> deal. Thats the sort of thing that prevents people from upgrading!

It might prevent an RPG'r from upgrading, but programmers using dozens of
other languages have been successfully dealing with such a situation for
many years. Did the adoption rate of VB 3.x, 4.x, 5.x or 6.x falter because
Microsoft kept adding new features, and therefore new reserved words?
Granted, it's not fun to do, but with a good search and replace utility, it
takes very little time. In addition, it is quite rare to actually have to do
this. You get used to the idea of setting up your naming standards so that
everything has a prefix.

You want to have your cake, and eat it too. That's fine, if Hans & crew can
pull it off. What I'm afraid of, is that the new "free" spec will be
bastardized for the sake of maintaining complete compatibility with all
existing applications. If it means that the new spec has to be coded as
shown below, I'm not going to use it anyway.

> 4) Optional EVAL and CALLP, but use some special character to
>    distinguish opcode names from var or proc names:
>
>       CF KeepLooping = *ON
>       CF /dow KeepLooping
>       CF    /read MasterFile
>       CF    /if %eof
>       CF       HandleEndOfFile()
>       CF    /endif
>       CF /enddo

In fact, I would be perfectly content if you weren't allowed to mix C and CF
specs at all. I hate the idea of having to maintain that kind of a
mixed-mode beast.


Respectfully,


John Taylor



+---
| This is the RPG/400 Mailing List!
| To submit a new message, send your mail to RPG400-L@midrange.com.
| To subscribe to this list send email to RPG400-L-SUB@midrange.com.
| To unsubscribe from this list send email to RPG400-L-UNSUB@midrange.com.
| Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com
+---END