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Hi James,
Unfortunately, none of the permutations I tried using level breaks generated the correct sequence of segments, spaces, and line breaks.
-snip-
To those Cycle-haters who regard the whole "control level" business as a total waste of time, I agree. But note that the program in question is still a Cycle program, and there's no reason in the world to throw out The Cycle just because trying to make control level breaks do what you want them to do is harder than coding your own logic.
Since this is an opinion piece, I feel somewhat cheeky replying. I don't intend to tell you that your impression is incorrect; your impression is yours to enjoy as you will. Rather than try to convince you (or others) that your opinion is misplaced, I'd like to take a presumptuous moment to focus on how your opinion came to be.
I have seen the same sort of opinion formed over numeric precision in EVAL (as well as numerous other non-RPG topics.) I am probably reading too much into your post, but the words 'Unfortunately, none of the permutations I tried' are the bits that prompted me.
'None of the permutations' suggests (and I may be wrong) that you spent a bit (maybe a lot) of time trying this, trying that and trying yet again before finally giving up. Without being judgemental, how much time did you spend in the RPG user's guide? (not the Reference manual) EVAL got a bad reputation for the reason that it seemed obvious how numbers work, so few RPG programmers bothered with the manual. When numeric precision errors began to surface, complaints about the bugs in the compiler were soon followed by complaints that even if it was working as intended, it was stupid.
Again, I'm not denigrating your impression. For all I know, you have a copy of Shelly & Cashman sitting open on your desk and it just doesn't click for someone who worked in traditional languages. But consider that there is an entire generation of RPG programmers who used level breaks every day, in tens of thousands of programs. I am one of them. I have no formal software education (I wanted to be William Primrose), and I (a simpleton) was able to work out not only level breaks, but matching records too.
Perhaps the level break should be consigned to the dustbin of history; I don't pine for for them any more than I yearn to work in an insanely loud machine room filled with unit record equipment and Bin Full lights that are burnt out.
So I guess my real response boils down to this: What references did you use to learn how to code RPG cycle level breaks?
--buck
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