Re: Programming philosophy Was:RPG IV program - comments request ed

["James W. Kilgore" <qappdsn@xxxxxxx>]

Scott,

It's great that you are fortunate to work in a shop with high standards.  It 
does
make life a whole lot easier.

I do have to take exception with the EXCPT vs UPDAT.  It's not an issue of
right/wrong, but I would like to explain -why- we adopted an EXCPT standard.

Your example if IF, EVAL, EVAL, UPDAT is a nice and clear use.  Unfortunately
when I've got a 150 page program listing in front of me and see that a file is
processed for update, I flip to the last page and can see the fields being
updated.  Otherwise I have to go through the whole darn thing and, well the last
guy probably wasn't as neat as you, I'll find EVAL/MOVE/Z-ADD  on pages 20, 38,
51, 62, 73, 85, 91, 104, etc.

Under RPGIII I could scan the first two positions of the result field for CU or
whatever, but not any more!  If I have a 200 field record being UPDAT'd I have 
to
search for every field name to see what is being changed. :(

Now to back off from my stand, in our WRK commands where the whole record is
being displayed for user change, we do an UPDAT.  But that's about the only time
we use such a shotgun approach to record changes.  Like DFU would.

Regards,
James W. Kilgore
qappdsn@ibm.net

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