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

[DAsmussen@xxxxxxx]

Peter,

In a message dated 11/3/00 3:41:22 PM US Eastern Standard Time, 
pcdow@MailAndNews.com writes:

> Will you help my clients pay me to rewrite programs that have GOTO's<G>? I'm
>  talking about old code that helps run hospitals, needs what should be a
>  minor tweak, a 5-minute change, but because I have to rewrite the logic to
>  not use GOTO's it could end up taking hours or even days.

Being a former healthcare coder myself, I feel your pain.  My point was, this 
code should not move forward.  It was OK when /36 and /38 code came forward 
to bring life to the AS/400, but that was TEN YEARS AGO.  IMO, it's about 
time the forward compatibility factor stopped.  With so many midrange 
programmers learning by example from the code they maintain, the bad stuff 
won't stop until support for it is stopped.

>  Actually, I'm unclear on a lot of things that have been discussed lately:
>  
>  - Can we mix CF-specs with C-specs?

Why would you want to?

>  - Are GOTO's being eliminated from the fixed-format C-spec?

Not from what we've seen so far.

>  - If a post V4R5 file is created with SQL with no special features, will I
>  be able to specify it on an F-spec and have it successfully open?
>  - If we're forced to use semicolons, just how ubiquitous do they have to be
>  to make the compiler writer's life easier?
>  - Are multiple statements going to be allowed on one line?
>  - Will SQL be integrated better with RPG?

Don't know about these.

Regards!

Dean Asmussen
Enterprise Systems Consulting, Inc.
Fuquay-Varina, NC  USA
E-mail:  DAsmussen@aol.com

"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts." -- John Wooden
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