RE: Compile error - why?

[Jim Langston <jlangston@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well, Joe, reading Han's post, the problem is that the compiler
is not guaranteed that the varying length field has enough space
set aside to hold the length of the date.

If the varying length field contains ' ', then it only has 2 bytes
assigned (one for length bit, one for the single character).  In
that case according to your scenario, the compiler would have to
change the length of the varying length field to make the data it
is going to load fit.

You are saying, no, don't do that, move it into a temp variable and
then move it to the varying, and that's where there would have to be
a special exception case set up for moving date variables, and the
length of the varying length field would wind up getting modified
anyway.

I understand the problems that Hans is talking about, and agree that
it would be a lot of work to implement this and maintain it, more than
the fact that we now have to code 2 lines of code instead of 1 to move
a date into a varying length field.  I can live with that, knowing
that means I'll get my multi dimensional arrays that much sooner.

Regards,

Jim Langston

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

> From: Jim Langston
>
> But then they break their own rules about not modifying the
> length of a varying
> field using fixed length OP codes such as MOVE.

I want to clarify this particular point:

I never said anything about changing the length of the field, Jim.  They
could have moved the date to a temporary variable, then moved that into the
varying field using the normal rules of varying fields, just like what Rich
did in the original post.

And that's going to do it for me for this thread.  It's already taking too
much bandwidth.  I'm in no way saying the compiler is bad, or the compiler
team is evil, or anything like that.  I just wanted to state my opinion that
just because there's a workaround is not necessarily a valid reason to not
include a feature.  I made my point, and don't want to argue over what is
essentially a nitpick that I started in the first place.

Joe