Re: Multi- Occurrence Data Structure

DeLong, Eric wrote:

Plunk any young developer down in front of a cycle based RPG program, then tell them that
they must first read and understand chapters 3, 4, and 5 of the ILE RPG reference before
they can understand what the program is doing.... Not very productive...

Funny: I never read those chapters, at least not cover-to-cover. All I read, at least initially, is the diagram that shows what The Cycle does, and I immediately understood why an explicit program-level return operation does a terminate-and-stay-resident in RPG, and why one way or another, in RPG, unless you have a primary file telling it when to shut down, YOU have to tell it when (and how) to stop. And I was immediately able to write "unconventional" Cycle programs. And after briefly reading up on what a primary file was, I was immediately able to write "conventional" ones as well.

Don't ask me to write or maintain a report program that's driven entirely by level breaks and so forth. Give that to an RPG specialist. But that sort of thing is far beyond simply understanding the presence of an implicit DO UNTIL LR loop, or implicit READ operations at the top of that loop on any file designated as "primary."