Re: READE is confusing to me

["M. Lazarus" <mlazarus@xxxxxxxx>]

Doug,

At 9/14/00 12:50 PM -0400, you wrote:
>And I'd much rather to:
>
>       C     Key           Setll     File
>       C                   DoW        %reade( File )
>
>          *  stuff
>
>       C                   EndDo
>
>And, since I *think* we'll be able to do this someday, it makes me
>care less about the other debate over the BIFs.  FWIW, the BIFs make
>sense to me in terms of being consistent with the indicator usage, but
>I do agree it is error-prone if you don't understand that different
>opcodes set different BIFs.  We've all seen plenty of posts here where
>people fell into that trap and didn't understand why.

  The "nice" part about it is that Toronto can still step up to the plate 
and "fix" this.


>I *never* saw a program which intentionally relied on this quirk of
>demand READs.  It was always my opinion that if IBM changed how it
>worked, that if programs behaved differently after being recompiled,
>they would more likely be working correctly for the first time...

  I've seen it!  It was used where the 2nd READ should only be done if the 
first READ was successful.  In that case, no additional test was needed to 
condition the 2nd READ.  I didn't like it at all, but at least I knew how 
it worked.  I was really glad when full-procedural files corrected 
it.  Also, to get rid of the "R"andom in the "F" spec.  I wondered why the 
"L" was still needed...

  -mark

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