RE: Are indicators evil creatures or victims of poor shop standards?

This is like our shop standard--never assume a result indicator retains its
value more than one line of code after it's set.  If you need its value
somewhere else, the line of code that follows the line of code that sets the
indicator sets a flag based on the indicator value.

(Last line of a read loop by, our definition, comes before the loop control
statement.)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: James W. Kilgore [mailto:qappdsn@attglobal.net]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2000 12:03 PM
> To: RPG400-L@midrange.com
> Subject: Re: Are indicators evil creatures or victims of poor shop
> standards?
> 
> 
> Buck,
> 
> I agree that indicators are not -evil-, just a pain.
> 
> Since we must us indicators for such things as position 
> cursor for a display
> file, they live on.
> 
> We have strong shop standards and have not found indicators 
> to be a particular
> problem.  Our standard is that a given indicator has a 
> particular meaning or a
> set of rules.  The only reason it works is through enforced 
> uniformity.
> 
> Here's a small example: Every file in the application has a 
> 'get record' routine
> that does a CHAIN.  Since we have to support V3R2 RPGIII, 
> this routine is in a
> /COPY member.  Every, and I mean every, incarnation of this 
> routine uses *IN90 as
> the resulting indicator.
> 
> These routines then uses *IN90 to set flags (variables) that 
> are used within the
> mainline code.  The rule for *IN90 is that it's use never 
> goes beyond the
> immediate purpose, flags are set instead.
> 
> You're right, without a plan, indicators are a mess.
> 
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