Re: [Re: RPGILE V4.3 Gotcha] -- RPG400-L

I know how to program in a lot of languages.  These include Basic (all types),
Pascal, C, dBase and Clipper, assembly (80x86), LOGO and a little COBOL,
FORTRAN and PERL:  There are others but I forget them all.

None of those languages treats math the way RPG does in the EVAL statement.

Yes, it is understood that the majority of decimal math is done in floating 
point
variables, but not all.  Take, for an example, Basic's Currency, which is a 
fixed
2 decimal format.

RPG, in this case, is the odd man out.

Now to answer your points.

1.  Computer programming is hard.
It is?  This is news to me.  I've been programming since I was 10 years old, and
am 35 years old now.  I have picked up and dropped so many languages over the
years I can't remember them all (remember Symphony?).  To me, programming
is not hard, it is logical.  Or is supposed to be logical.  I do not program 
for a

living because I make a ton of money doing it and work short hours, neither of
which is true.  I program because I enjoy it.  If I didn't like programming, I'd
be
doing something else.

2.  Learning programming is hard
I've learned programming a long time ago.  With the exception of style changes
and unique characteristics, picking up a new language for me is rather simple.
Notable exceptions being C (the 4th one I learned) because of it's pointer
issues and assembly (same situation).

3) "There's than one way to do it!"
Interestingly enough, you have an "IF" opcode, that surprisingly does the same
thing it does in Basic, C, pascal, etc...  And your "DO" while, until does the
same
thing it does in the other languages.  END IF, GOTO, MULT, etc...  If I see an
"IF" statement in any language, I know what it's going to do.  Same with the
others.
And in Basic or Pascal or Clipper or C if I see something like:
A = B * C * E / F / G
A := B * C * E / F / G

There are only two things I am going to be looking at to figure the value of A.
First
is the order of operations (is it * or / probably same, and is right to left, or
left to
right) and the second is the size of my variables.  And I would be right.  
Except
in
RPG where the answer could be totally different than any other language.

Why?  Because RPG wants to do it different than every other language, for no
really
good reason that I can see.  If the fact of the matter is there is a problem and
that
RPG is not capable of doing it that way, I would understand.  But, there is an H
spec switch we can set to make it like the rest of the world.

What I really think happened is when the EVAL statement was originally coded
the programmers wrote it backwards, then tried to "fix it" with the header spec.

If that's the case why not just admit it, and move on?  Instead of telling 
peoople

they're supposed to know that RPG is backwards if they had RTFM.

Regards,

Jim Langston

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