re: Prototyping printf()

["David Morris" <dmorris@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hans,

You are right, who cares about printf(),  I don't need it.  But I did have to 
spend about 100 hours coding a parameter passing system because RPGIV 
does not support parameterized types.  In this case I was creating the long 
promised but as yet delivered %chain, etc. If we had the ability to pass 
variable type data we would not need 90%+ of the enhancements that have 
been proposed for RPGIV.  

David Morris

>>> boldt@ca.ibm.com 09/26/00 06:05AM >>>
Simon wrote:
>Aaaarrrrrggghhhh!!!!

Exsqueeze me?  Why care about C's printf function at all?  The
main reason C has this weird function is to make up for it's
poor string handling support.  Why not use RPG's native string
handling capabilities to build the string before output?  You
can easily concatenate strings using the + operator and you can
easily convert numeric to char using %CHAR, %EDITC, and %EDITW.
RPG's string support is easily miles ahead of C, so why not
take advantage of it?

(Mind you, we do realize that RPG, or rather the AS/400 in
general, needs better operational descriptor support which might
make prototyping printf easier.  But printf is a bad example for
justifying that.)

Cheers!  Hans

Hans Boldt, ILE RPG Development, IBM Toronto Lab, boldt@ca.ibm.com 


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