RE: Is this the Free-Format that we asked for?

>Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2000 10:25:37 -0500
>From: "Richard Jackson" <richardjackson@richardjackson.net>
> ...
>If I cannot code a GOTO or BRANCH command in version 5 of a language when
>the other 4 versions supported GOTO then something has been removed.
> ...

Richard,

There is no version 5 of RPG.  I don't know where this talk of RPG V
came from.  The free-form syntax can co-exist with fixed-form syntax.
Nothing is being taken away.  There are several opcodes that are not
available in free-form syntax; most of them have existing or new builtin
function equivalents.  Some must still be coded in fixed-form calcs
(e.g. GOTO, TAG, MHLZO, TESTN, a few others).

You can be sure that if there is ever a version 5 of RPG that does not
allow any fixed-form calculations, there will either be a GOTO or there
will be other ways to code all the reasonable things that GOTO allows
you to do.  But
if such a language ever exists
and if that language doesn't have GOTO
and if that language has new constructs to handle the goto situations
and if there is an IBM-supplied conversion tool
then I imagine that GOTO will be handled like FREE is handled in the
current conversion tool.  (It's left in the code, but the RPG IV compiler
doesn't support FREE, so it has to be hand-converted.)

For now, you can code this:

C     XXX       TAG
 /free
 some free-form stuff
 /end-free
C               GOTO     TAG
 /free
 some more free-form stuff
 /end-free

Barbara Morris


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