RE: Compile error - why?

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: Rich Duzenbury
>
> Point taken.  I am less idealistic on this particular bit of functionality
> than you.  I am also unclear on how anyone not directly connected to the
> RPG compiler project could possibly know just how difficult the
> implementation of a given feature is.

Perhaps I'm making a bad assumption based on my own personal experience with
compilers and code generators.  Really there's nothing magic about a
compiler - it generates code.  Some of it is quite complex, some of it is
simple.  Optimization, for example, is particularly sophisticated coding.
This instance is significantly closer to the simple end of the spectrum than
the complex.  You work around the issue by moving the date to a temporary
working field and then moving it to the varying field.  Exactly how much
work would it have been for the compiler to do something similar?

Hey, maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe there is some inherent difficulty that would
make it all but impossible for the compiler to use a temporary working
variable for the move.  Fine.  But it seems to me that the compiler is doing
this kind of thing all the time, and that the compiler team just didn't
think it was worth the effort in this particular instance.  That's the only
point I was making, and if I'm wrong, fine.  I was just asking that the team
make a good faith effort to think of the end users first, that's all.

Joe