Re: will v6r1 RPG support main procedure recursion?

Steve Richter wrote:

When you have a GC you can write code like so:
CustomerRecord[] customers = GetListOfCustomers( arg1: arg2 ) ;

without it:
CustomerRecord[] customers ;
GetListOfCustomers( customers: arg1: arg2 ) ;
// dont forget to free the customers struct!

This is, at best, tangentially related to garbage collection.

Sure, a routine that returns data by reference would be easier to manage if you had garbage collection -- so there's a relationship there -- but it's not a very strong one.

I guess what I'm saying is this: If you ask the compiler developers for "garbage collection", it won't be clear to them that what you're really looking for is for procedures to return values by reference, and to use GC to simplify the management of that dynamic memory. Instead, they'll leave the return values alone, and add garbage collection to dynamic allocations -- which would help very few people.

I certainly agree that what you're asking for would be a useful feature -- but it would not be near the top of my wish list. There certainly have been times when I've wanted a huge return value that can be used in an expression, and where returning by value was too inefficient... but, it has been relatively rare.