Re: Indicators

["Michael Naughton" <michael_naughton@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've tried to stop using indicators, too, but sometimes they just seem
really handy. The other day, I came across a situation where I just
couldn't see _not_ using them. I wanted to test two 8,0 fields to see if
they held valid date values, based on either *ISO or *USA format, and if
either one of them was bad I wanted to set an error flag.

My code ended up looking like this:

 *                  Test passed date & set error flag if bad          
C                   Select                                            
C                   When          (PRMFMT = '*YYMD')                  
C     *ISO          TEST (D)                PRMSDT                 99 
C  N99*ISO          TEST (D)                PRMEDT                 99 
C                   When          (PRMFMT = '*MDYY')                  
C     *USA          TEST (D)                PRMSDT                 99 
C  N99*USA          TEST (D)                PRMEDT                 99 
C                   EndSL                                             
C   99              Eval      PRMERR = *ON      

The shortest non-indicator version I could come up with was this:

 *                  Test passed date & set error flag if bad
C                   Select                                  
C                   When          (PRMFMT = '*YYMD')        
C     *ISO          TEST (DE)               PRMSDT          
C                   If             NOT %Error               
C     *ISO          TEST (DE)               PRMEDT          
C                   Endif                                   
C                   When          (PRMFMT = '*MDYY')        
C     *USA          TEST (DE)               PRMSDT          
C                   If             NOT %Error               
C     *USA          TEST (DE)               PRMEDT          
C                   Endif                                   
C                   EndSL                                   
C                   If             %Error                   
C                   Eval      PRMERR = *ON                  
C                   Endif

which is a difference of 16 lines instead of 9. Is there a better way to
do it? Or is there some other reason why avoiding indicators in this case
is "better"? I fully agree that in many (most?) situations there are
better ways, but "most" is not "all", and I'm not sure that indicators
won't remain useful in the future. . . .

Am I missing something?

(PS: don't bother telling me that when I switch to /free I won't be able
to use indicators. I know that. If I'm forced to switch, I'll give up
indicators, but IMHO that's not a good reason. So far, I find the benefits
of /free underwhelming, and I'm a guy who has done a fair amount of
programming in Visual Basic and DIBOL -- both very free-format.)

Ron writes:
>Yes I stopped using numbered indicators a while ago, 


Mike Naughton
Senior Programmer/Analyst
Judd Wire, Inc.
124 Turnpike Road
Turners Falls, MA  01376
413-863-4357 x444
mnaughton@xxxxxxxxxxxx