RE: (no subject)

Bob,

Ignoring other programing languages completely, what is wrong with
having semi colons at the end of every statement?  In fact, when I
first started coded, I often would try to stick a semi colon at the
end of my if statements and wonder why my programs wouldn't work
right, it just seemed logical to me, at the time, that if they should
be at the end of statements, why wouldn't they belong at the end of
every statement?

Of course, to facilitate this, C's if statement has it's own limitations.
In freeform RPG we can say
If X = Y;
can't do that in C, sytax error, need parenthesis to surround your
logical expression.

It's a trade off either way you look at it.  By adding semi colons to
the end of If type statements we have thrown off the shackles of other
artificial if constructs to make up for it [ (}'s and {}'s ].

As far as PL/I, no clue, never even seen a PL/I statement in my life.
No idea what limitations it places on if statements to make up for
missing the semi colon.

JMO.

Regards,

Jim Langston

-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-admin@midrange.com [mailto:rpg400-l-admin@midrange.com]On
Behalf Of Bob Cozzi (RPGIV)
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2001 11:54 AM
To: rpg400-l@midrange.com
Subject: RE: (no subject)


Let's not start a rumor that I want C instead of RPG. I was simply
stating that (in broader terms here) that even a poorly conceived syntax
of a language like C doesn't require semi colons at the end of
conditional statements.

My favorite is PL/I which also doesn't require them on conditional
statements.
>From what I hear from IBM, they don't have technological reasoning
behind most enhancements that have been implemented but rather they do
them for one of several reasons, including but not limited to:

It's the best way to do it.
It's a good enough way and we've run out of time to make it better.
It's the way Hans wants it <g>.
We RPG programmers are too dumb to figure out the right way, so we'll do
it this other way.


I'm sure there's more reasons but those are the one's I've heard of from
several X-IBM Language Lab people.

Bob Cozzi
cozzi@rpgiv.com
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