overloading was RE: CEETSTA API

[rob@xxxxxxxxx]

Scott's point might be that after they add it you have little choice as to 
whether or not you use it.  You may end up using it inadvertently.  As I 
did with my experiences with UDF's and stored procedures.

Rob Berendt
-- 
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary 
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." 
Benjamin Franklin 





"Bartell, Aaron L. (TC)" <ALBartell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent by: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
08/28/2003 04:24 PM
Please respond to RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
 
        To:     "'RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries'" 
<rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
        cc: 
        Fax to: 
        Subject:        RE: CEETSTA API


>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