RE: Strange behavior w/%editc()

[Jim Langston <jlangston@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Myself, I avoid MOVE and MOVEL like the plague.  I've seen too much code
like:

C            MOVER      SOMEVAR    KEYFLD
C            MOVE       OTHERVR    KEYFLD
C            MOVE       YETANOT    KEYFLD

and from this I have to figure out what the heck KEYFLD contains.  First I
have to figure out what the lengths of SOMEVAR, OTHERVR and YETANOT are, and
what KEYFLD is, then figure out which bytes in the KEYFLD get overlain with
each move.  If I'm maintaining that code, I make KEYFLD a DS and (pre EVAL)
MOVE into each of the parts.  Now my code is self explanatory.  You want to
know what KEYFLD is going to contain, you have one place to look, the KEYFLD
DS which tells you exactly what it's going to contain when all is said and
done.

And when EVAL came in, even better yet, EVAL into the sub-fields.  Even more
self explanatory.

I come from the school of thought that I will code 5 extra lines of code if
it makes my code more self explanatory to the maintenance programmer who
follows me 3 years from now.  Or myself when I have to revisit this code in
4 months.

If I have to make a simple fix I would rather go through well
self-documenting code and be able to figure out the logic and make a
change/fix in 5 minutes then spend 20 minutes trying to figure out what the
programmer was smoking the day s/he wrote this pile of spaghetti.

Regards,

Jim Langston

-----Original Message-----
From: Joe Pluta [mailto:joepluta@PlutaBrothers.com]

Thank you, Jim.  You've made my point quite eloquently.
...