RE: Scope of variables and subprocedures(typed pointers)

[Joel Fritz <JFritz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I like the idea of typed pointers and the ability to dereference them.  It
could protect you from doing some things that would exemplify "unpredictable
results."  Seems like pointers in RPG are more useful for calling APIs or C
functions than they are in RPG.  I haven't found a need for a linked list or
other dynamic memory allocation thing yet.  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: bmorris@ca.ibm.com [mailto:bmorris@ca.ibm.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 1999 11:18 AM
> To: RPG400-L@midrange.com
> Subject: Re: Scope of variables and subprocedures
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> >Date: 13 Dec 1999 18:05:36 -0600
> >From: "Scott Klement" <infosys@klements.com>
> > ...
> >I'd like to see
> >something similar to the way structures work in C, where you declare
> >a "type" of structure, and then can declare many different instances
> >of that data structure.
> 
> Me too.  In my mind, this is part of qualified names so I forgot to
> mention it specifically.
> 
> > ...
> >> - typed pointers with a dereference operator
> >
> >On this, I'm going to disagree with you :)   I program in both RPG
> >(on the AS/400) and C (on Unix) and I think that the way pointers
> >work in RPG is actually much easier to deal with and support.
> >Things start to get very complicated, IMHO, when you start doing
> >typed pointers and deferencing...
> >...
> >Perhaps you know of an advantage to derefencing that I'm not
> >considering?
> 
> I think it would be nice to be ABLE to declare typed pointers,
> and have the compiler complain if you tried to assign the wrong
> type of address to them.  Also, I think it would be nice to be
> able to directly use the result of a procedure that returns a pointer
> rather than have to assign the pointer to a based variable and then
> use that variable.
> 
> Maybe I was wrong to characterize this as "necessary", though.
> 
> Barbara Morris
> 
> 
> 
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