Re: MAIN and LR

Alan Campin wrote:

The MAIN says do not bind the RPG cycle. You could not use an IP with
a Main program because it does not have an RPG cycle. IF is under your
control and is valid in a MAIN program.

The MAIN keyword is just acknowledging a reality that has been true
for 20 years. 99.9% of the programs that we write do not use the cycle
so why add the overhead to a program to run it when we don't use it.

To which I've always responded (if not necessarily in such a
conciliatory manner), "If you're not writing a Cycle program
(conventional or unconventional), then is RPG necessarily the best
language for the job?"

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?

--
JHHL