RE: CEETSTA API

["Bartell, Aaron L. (TC)" <ALBartell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>I don't see how that solves the problem?   Unless you wanted to write the
same code twice, that is.

The example you gave at the bottom of the program is what I am talking
about.  Instead of getCust(nbr: *Omit) and getCust(*Omit: 'John') you would
create getCustByName and getCustByNbr.  

<Scott>
I won't.  I don't like overloading.  I think it's confusing when the
compiler gives you an error "procedure not found" and the reason turns out
to be that one of your variables is a "short" and the procedure was
expecting an "int".   That's not intuitive.
</Scott>

I think implicit type casting would solve the above problem, but I am
guessing you would still have a beef if we could create our own objects in
RPG and the difference between two same-named sub procs would be that they
accepted different types of objects.  I think this would be very nice when
used appropriately.

<Scott>
I don't like it when I search a program for a procedure called "GetCust"
fix a bug in it, and it has no effect because there's more than one
procedure called GetCust.
</Scott>

Well written overloaded sub procs will not have much if any duplicate code,
IMO.  You put the reusable pieces of code in non-exported sub procs that can
be used by all of the GetCust overloaded methods.

>I don't like having to specify a "mangled" name when creating binder
source, or when using %paddr().
Not sure what you mean here.


>The problems of overloading far outweight the minor difficulties of making
procedure names like "GetCustByName" instead of "GetCustByNumber"

I think they should be added, and if you don't like them then you can go and
camp out with Joe in the "un-useful RPG enhancements" camp :-)

Aaron Bartell