Re: Free format H, F, D and P specs

On 10/7/2013 2:28 PM, Alan Campin wrote:

The following is my opinion only.

What I don't like about the announcement is that it is in the same
language, RPG IV. I think IBM should have come out with a new version of
RPG, RPG V or maybe RPGM for RPG Modern with all the free form syntax. No
support for fixed format at all and all the old garbage out of the
language. A clean spec. A modern compiler built for multi-treading. If you
want to write modern go with the new language. Maintaining old stuff. Use
RPG IV or RPG III.

Alan, I feel the same way you do. Ish. I'd like to see much stronger
OPDESC and NULL support as well as namespaces. Think of the marvelous
things we could do then!

On the other hand, changing the tokeniser to recognise free format F
specs is a much lighter lift than any of those - light enough that they
managed it between releases. I'm not getting namespaces in my stocking,
but I'm not getting coal either. In the final analysis, this
announcement is good for RPG, which makes it good for me, an RPG programmer.
--buck