RE: Prototyping printf()

[Jon.Paris@xxxxxx]

 >> I don't think that this requires op codes if - and that is a very big
"if" - Barbara and her team can add a requirement into the program creation
process and program objects.

In part this is what I meant by the comment about descriptor support. This
is exactly the use to which it would be put. The descriptors are supposed
to be the glue that allows complete inter language parameter passing
flexibility but .....  trouble is Rochester still haven't seen fit to even
giving us a halfway decent subset of the standard data types.  I could live
with a set that only supported limited numeric types for example, but
there's still no sign of them doing anything.

Even with full descriptor support, I might still want to see some op-code
support.  Look at the situation in printf.  It is the _content_ of the
format parameter that determines how many and what size, and shape the
subsequent parameters are.  The called routine doesn't know what it will
receive and therefore the compiler can't anticipate it.  The parms (in an
RPG context) have to be unloaded into specific variables of the correct
type/size.  The compiler generated code could - using the descriptors if
they existed - unload the parms into temp storage and pass a list of
pointers together with size/type.  In the end though, my code would have to
dereference it anyway so an RPG "pop" op-code seemed to be a reasonable
approach even if not strictly required.

The compiler folks have given us some wonderful C interface capabilities
with Options(*String) and %Str but I fear they can't do it all alone.

Perhaps the decision not to enhance descriptor support was made by the same
Rochester development manager who thinks we all code in C and C++ and
therefore only need manual examples in those languages!

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