RE: Scope of variables and subprocedures.

>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1999 14:58:13 -0700
>From: Alan Campin <Alan.Campin@CaseLogic.com>
>
>>> - unlimited-length character variables (or at least no arbitrary
>>>   RPG limit)
>
>I thought that ILE RPG already had this using the "name..." convention. At
>least, I am using it.

That's just for long names.  I'm talking about the length of the data (e.g.
10A,
32767A).

>>> - access to the IFS file system
>
>Are us talking about built in functions because functions are already
>available to read and write to IFS file system? I have written them and so
>have many others.

I know that you can access the IFS file system using the C runtime library.
But I think we should at least consider whether RPG programmers should be
able to code an IFS file on an F spec as say a STREAM file, and do I/O
using
READ, WRITE etc..  Lots of differences in I/O specs (if I/O specs were used
at all - maybe the I/O would just be into varying length fields ...)

>>> - typed pointers with a dereference operator
>>> - variable-type in prototyped parameters
>
>Could you give an example of these?

Currently RPG's pointers don't have an associated type, so to dereference
them, you need to assign the pointer to the basing pointer for some
field.  C has typed pointers, so to dereference them, you just need to
use the dereference operator (*).  Presumably RPG would have a dereference
BIF - e.g. %deref(ptr).

Variable type:
D proc         pr                   opdesc
D   parm                            options(*vartype)

 * Both these calls are valid because the first parameter
 * allows any type
C             callp    proc(field1)
C             callp    proc(field2)
Operational descriptors would also have to evolve to handle
all the data types so "proc" would know what it got.

Barbara Morris


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