Re: Advantages of RPG

James Lampert wrote:

Really, most of what has been mentioned so far gives RPG little or no advantage over COBOL or PL/I, because most of what has been mentioned so far is stuff that existed in those languages long before it existed in PL/I.

Actually, I consider COBOL (nearly) on a par with RPG. Until some of the enhancements in the last round of RPG, I would often refer to RPG as "shorthand for COBOL". I don't use PL/I, so couldn't comment on it.

I'm disappointed (but by no means surprised, given how many people consider it a disadvantage that ought to be formally deprecated) that nobody has mentioned *The Cycle* as an advantage of RPG.

I don't use the cycle anymore, James. I know you love it, but it does little for me in my day-to-day programming. My style is to use SETLL/READE or SQL cursors. I'm trying to think back to the last time I had a situation where the cycle fit *better* than a standard read loop. I can't think of one.

That doesn't mean there aren't such situations, just that I don't run into them very often anymore.

Yes, I know, SQL also has the ability to implicitly apply something to an entire file, but RPG had it before SQL existed, and besides, SQL hardly qualifies as a procedural language.

Actually, according to TIOBE SQL is not a programming language because it's not Turing complete. You have to add the procedural stuff in order to turn it into a language - things like PL/SQL or Transact-SQL.

Joe