Re: Question about service programs

On 8-Aug-08, at 8:53 AM, Simon Coulter wrote:

Note1: The inconsistencies in the various CRTBNDxxx commands
seriously irritates me.

BNDDIR ACTGRP DFTACTGRP
CRTBNDC N N N
CRTBNDCBL Y Y N
CRTBNDCL N Y Y
CRTBNDCPP N N N
CRTBNDRPG Y Y Y

I'm not surprised by the lack of support on the C and C++ commands
because they are obviously written by people with NO understanding of
OS/400 (witness the blindingly stupid use of the OUTPUT parameter as
a case in point) but I would expect System DCG (if it still exists)
to ensure consistency. All these commands should support all three
keywords even if DFTACTGRP is a bad idea (and don't get me started on
STGMDL).

In some ways the only real inconsistency here is with the lack of BNDDIR on CRTBNDCL - and I thought they were fixing that in 6.1 but maybe not.

I think the problem is more that the parameter name DFTACTGRP was always a truly stupid one. If it had been named sensibly it would have been CMPMODE (or whatever Compatibility Mode would become). Seen in that context, the differences make more sense in that the C, C++, and COBOL compilers do not offer compatibility mode operation. You can make a good arguement that COBOL certainly should have offered compatibility mode (and I'll accept my share of the blame for the fact that it doesn't) but there were budgetary constraints at the time that made it impossible to incorporate.

Jon Paris

www.Partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com