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

["John Taylor" <john.taylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Peter,

> Yes, I know, beating a dead horse. So can we consider it a hypothetical
> thing? I'm curious -- are you saying that as long as we don't
> split a token
> we don't need terminators or continuation characters?

For the record, the continuation rules that I mentioned are limited to the
existing release of RPG IV. The rules are not exactly straight forward. If
you want the nitty gritty details, you can find a discussion of it in the
ILE Reference Manual. I don't remember the exact chapter, but whenever I
need to find it I just look up "continuation" in the index.

>And that using them
> would allow us to split tokens? Yikes!! Imagine this:
>
> e
> v
> a
> l
> =
> '
> a
> '
> ;
>
> Is this what having line terminators will allow us to do?

Presumably, yes.

Of course, such an example is no more the fault of the line terminator, than
spaghetti code is the fault of the GOTO. ;-)


> Who's going to write the first utility to "prettyify" the
> free-format code?
> Isn't there something like that for C programs?


I've been fortunate enough to avoid C for most of my career, so I don't have
an answer for you. However, I can say that a good source editor will do much
of that for you.


Regards,

John Taylor
Canada

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