Re: will v6r1 RPG support main procedure recursion?

Actually, when you take out the very few things unique to RPG, like The Cycle, you end up with just another language, with very little to distinguish it from any number of other programming languages.

There are a bunch of things in RPG that, by being rigid, inflexible, "unitaskers" (as Alton Brown might put it), qualify as "legacy crap." A number of them only have meaning in Cycle programs. But The Cycle, as a thing in itself, is not one of them. In fact, I'd say there are more UNconventional ways to use The Cycle constructively than there are conventional ways, and as long as you understand the basic premise that an RPG program lives inside a "DO UNTIL LR" loop, they're perfectly understandable and maintainable.

Indeed, of the items you listed, Indicators are the only one that seems like a maintenance nightmare, but they're really just a set of predefined LOGICAL*1 variables (anybody here know what language "LOGICAL*1" comes from?), and isn't there now a way to assign more meaningful names to them?

I've recently noticed that the people who most vocally deprecate all use of The Cycle are mostly the same people who appear afraid to learn any other languages. Maybe it might help if somebody repackaged PL/I as a new kind of RPG? (Oh, wait, isn't that pretty much what they did for RPG/free?)