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Hi Tom... "Tom Tufankjian" <Tom_Tufankjian@hbltd.com> wrote: > > Lately a question has been floating through my mind: "Can RPGLE be > used in a way simulate object oriented programing?" I'd say the answer is "somewhat". You can use sub-procedures like you use methods... But the whole idea of "inheritance" is just about impossible to implement. Furthermore, you can't really declare different "objects" of a "class". If your service program is an object, you can't define 3 other objects of that same type (at least not easily or on-the-fly) and you certainly can't have an array of objects all of the same class that have different copies of the same methods. > In OO programming you don't pass parms all the time. You call metho > to "set" or "get" values. That is the "public interface". <<SNIP>> I disagree with that statement. You do pass parms -- when you set values, you pass a parm containing the value to set it as... when you call a method, you pass parms to the method. You can also set variables directly if they're defined as part of the public interface of a class (tho most of the time this is frowned upon because you can't guarentee their integrity) you can do the same thing in ILE using activation group exports. > > One problem is that procedure names cannot be qualified by service > program (I don't think). So if you used two servie programs that > contained the same procedure name, rpg would be confused. This isn't a huge problem (at least in comparison to the inheritance and class/object ones). You can simply declare each procedure within a service program as beginning with the service program name, like "CustRec_SetStatus" and "ItemRec_SetStatus" would be procedures in the CustRec and ItemRec service programs, respectively. Then you'd call them as CustRec_SetStatus('A') and perhaps CustRec_Update() if you wanted to update the customer record. > > Sorry for being so long winded. Any comments out there? > So, my conclusion is "not really" since two of the main concepts of OO programming are inheritance, and the concept that objects are declared as instances of a class are both pretty much impossible in RPG. Thanks for the brain workout :) +--- | 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 +---
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