RE: CL pgm and pointer variables

-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-admin@midrange.com [mailto:rpg400-l-admin@midrange.com]On
Behalf Of Hans Boldt
Sent: Thursday, November 21, 2002 8:03 AM

>
> If this scenario is not what you have in mind, do you consider it to have
> merit?

>No. You still have to validate and store each value individually
>anyways. And since the compiler knows the attributes of the target
>variables at compile-time anyways, there is little to be gained by
>deferring the type determination to run-time.

>I think I understand what you're suggesting. But since the
>validation for each input value is unique anyways (generally), you
>still have to handle the inputs one by one. (You *are* validating
>*all* of your CGI inputs, aren't you?)

Of course I validate input, just as an appl programmer should!  I am being
minimal in  my example for the purpose of clarity. To add validatation to
example I describe a 3rd array could be added.  The 1st array contains data
pointers to the pgm variables to be populated, the 2nd array contains the
field names of those variables as appears in the stdin stream received from
the browser and the 3rd array contains error information retrieved when the
stdin char data ( "fld1=22.5&fld2=abc+efg&...." ) could not be mapped into
the data pointer addressed variable.

I challenge you or others to show how this very important and common task of
mapping data from the browser stdin stream into variables in a program could
be done as directly and efficiently as can be done with data pointers.

Any idea whose idea was it to provide data pointers in the original s/38?


>Cheers!  Hans  (2 days left to my LOA!)

congrats on the reason for the LOA!


Steve Richter