Re: Indicators

[Joel Cochran <jrc@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 2004-08-18 at 15:50, Michael Naughton wrote:
> 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.

> 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. . . .

This was a real stretch for me (going back to fixed-format), but here is
what I came up with:

d testDate        s               d   inz

c                   monitor
c                   if        PRMFMT = '*YYMD'
c                   eval      testDate = %date( PRMSDT : *ISO )
c                   eval      testDate = %date( PRMEDT : *ISO )
c                   elseif    PRMFMT = '*MDYY'
c                   eval      testDate = %date( PRMSDT : *USA )
c                   eval      testDate = %date( PRMEDT : *USA )
c                   endif
c                   on-error
c                   eval      PRMERR = *ON
c                   endmon

This solution ends up at 11 lines and a new variable.  Of course, the
number of lines doesn't really matter, but it is comparable to the 9 you
mentioned before.

> Am I missing something?

You are missing readability, which is also the number one offering of
/free, but is that underwhlems you then I'm not sure what to say. I'm
not trying to dig at you or suggest that you need to switch to /free,
just that if you don't at least acknowledge the readability of things
like /free and the PITA factor of things like left-hand indicators, then
we are at an impasse.  

> (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.)

You won't be able to use RESULTING indicators, but you can still use
indicators if you really want to.