Re: *INZSR - I still love you!!!

[Hans Boldt <boldt@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Bob cozzi wrote:
> Tony,
> I'd have to both agree and disagree with this one.
> I think the use of the *INZSR was very viable in RPGIII and is still viable
> today with RPG IV. 
> I've never bought into the notion that just because you can't see the code
> in front of you, the feature shouldn't be used. This is the kind of excuse I
> hear all the time when I ask people why they avoid /COPY like the plague. 
> Having said that, if I could walking in someone else's shoes for a moment
> and suppose I was using another language (primarily) and not familiar with
> RPG, then yes, *INZSR would present an interesting learning curve to me. I
> would probably spend hours (days?) trying to figure out what the heck was
> going on.... But then I'd learn *INZSR and its function and I'd be set for
> the rest of my career. 

Learning curve for *INZSR? If you can't figure it out in minutes (if not 
seconds), then you're in the wrong profession. IMO.

If I remember correctly, one of the main reasons justifying the addition 
of *INZSR to the RPG III language was that there was no way to fully 
initialize your output fields prior to the first *DETL step of the RPG 
logic cycle. Now, while there /may/ have been enough users of the RPG 
logic cycle around at the V2R3 time frame to justify *INZSR, there are 
certainly a lot fewer cycle users today.

Maybe I'm just in a cranky mood today, but I'm not sure if saving one 
(1) EXSR statement in the typical RPG program is enough of a reason to 
justify having a special *INZSR name in the language. (Sure, there's 
always RESET. But as I suggested earlier, I don't think much of RESET 
either!)

As someone else mentioned, putting the initialization up front is 
clearer than putting it lower down amongst the subroutines.

Cheers! Hans