Re: MAIN and LR

On 2012-09-25, at 5:06 PM, rpg400-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Sometimes it is; sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it's just the only
language available. And why bother with all this "/free" bovine scat to
make RPG look like PL/I, when it would have made more sense to upgrade
the PL/I compiler from a crude OPM subset PRPQ to a full ILE-based
implementation with full access to bound calls, STDIN/STDOUT, and so forth?

Nobody tried to make RPG IV "look like" anything. The intent was to make it a better RPG. MOst of us think that effort was successful.

Upgrading the PL/I compiler was studied many times over the years. It didn't make any kind of economic sense then and it doesn't now.

PL/I never gained traction 20+ years ago - don't know why anyone would think it would today. RPG IV was only economically viable because there was a solid C-based implementation of RPG III that was done as part of the SAA work that IBM undertook that could form a foundation. PL/I was written in PL/MI a PL dialect that was not compatible with the mainframe implementation. Producing an ILE version would have required starting from scratch and for you, Don Rima and the other 5 people who might have used it that made no sense. If there is any flavor of PL/I in today's RPG it comes about because one of the leads on the project formerly worked on the PL/I compiler. We're all influenced by what we have done before.


Jon Paris

www.partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com