RE: Free-format RPG

[Scott Klement <klemscot@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> The Visual Basic of which I'm familiar uses no end of statement delimiter.
> Perhaps more recent versions do.

Every version of Visual Basic ever made uses TWO statement delimters, as
do the other examples of the BASIC language on which VB was modelled.

the delimiters are CRLF (end-of-line) and the colon (":") character.

Using end-of-line tricks you into thinking that there's no delimiter,
because there's no printed symbol.  However, it creates another
problem...  how do you write a line of code that spans across multiple lines?

In VB you use the underscore ("_") character.  That seems overly
complicated.   Two different statement delimiters, and then a _ to say
that the CRLF that follows it doesn't count.   Plus, is the _ character a
good choice?

At first glance, a better choice might be the + character.   That's what
CL uses.  However, quite logically, RPG already uses that for both
concatenation *and* for addition.   So if you had this statement:

   C             eval     var = "my one really big long line " +
   C                           "my two really big long line"

   C             eval     onevariable = twovariable + 2576 +
   C                         twovariable + 4

   you'd have this:

   /free
   var = "my one really big long line" + +
         "my two really big long line"
   onevariable = twovariable + 2576 + +
         twovariable + 4
   /endfree

I'm sorry, but... YUCK.   That's why Hans is talking about an
"unambiguous statement delimiter".   That example is very ambiguous,
not to mention ugly.

So, what can you do?   And, would what you come up with REALLY be
better than the semicolon?