RE: PI to replaced *Entry PLIST (was Because it's there... )

Jon,

<< If you use the %Parms built-in to test how many parameters were received
<< (and thereby avoid "touching" any that were not passed) then any RPGIV
<< program can handle optional parms.

I don't know about anybody else, but I'm starting to avoid this technique.
We have dozens of programs that employ this technique but it soon becomes a
maintenance nightmare. Let's say programA is called by programB and
programC. Now, programB wants to pass a new parameter to programA for a new
function. No problem, programA gets changed to only process the parameter if
it was passed. But now programC wants to pass a different function to
programA. It needs to pass the parameter that programB is passing in
addition to its parameter. But programC doesnt have, nor want to pass that
parameter. So now, programA needs to be coded not only to ignore parameters
it didn't get (easy enough) but also to check the parameters it did get to
make sure they are to be processed. You can't check for blanks or zeros,
because these might be valid as parameters, so you really need some keyword
(*OMIT) or value.

While I haven't changed our programs to use em yet, doesnt protoyping allow
for *OMIT exactly for this reason? So wouldn't it be better to prototype and
use the *OMIT method?

Ron Hawkins




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