Bitwise ops in RPG (was: Re: Determining *DS4 support)

[boldt@xxxxxxxxxx]

Jim wrote:
>If you do create a bitwise AND please do not make the token 'AND' but
>some other symbols, perhaps C's '&&'.  It gets very confusing when AND
>is both bitwise and logical.  Code that looks like it should work either
>doesn't or is intermittent, but it still compiles with AND as both bitwise
>and logical.  Especially if you allow IF statements to become true on
>non *zero values.  That's my biggest complaint with Basic.

But of course!  AND and OR should only ever refer to the logical
operations.  Otherwise, severe ambiguities would result.

This begs the question:  What syntax would you prefer for bitwise
operations?

a) infix operators:
      x ANDB y
      x ORB y
      x XORB y
      NOTB y

   (&& and || (like in C) are problematical for us since '|' is
   not in the invariant EBCDIC code page.)

b) built-in functions:
      %BITAND(x:y)
      %BITOR(x:y)
      %BITXOR(x:y)
      %BITNOT(x)

Cheers!  Hans

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

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