Re: Sunday Moment ...

Hi, Jon:

Thanks for that.

This whole thread reminds me of some of the tricks people used to do on IBM mainframes (360, 370) back in the day with instructions like the "TR" (translate) and "TRT" (translate and test). You can do some very similar things by reversing the operands of those instructions, but it would always create a real "gotcha" for the next poorfellow to come along and try to maintain that code.

Mark S. Waterbury

> On 5/24/2016 5:10 PM, Jon Paris wrote:

That’s a polite version Mark - yes.

Having spent most of my 45+ years maintaining/modifying other people’s code I am _very_ sensitive to the havoc that tricks like this can cause.


Jon Paris

www.partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com

On May 24, 2016, at 4:54 PM, Mark S Waterbury <mark.s.waterbury@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi, Dave:

I think, if anyone did use this "technique" with %xlate, they should certainly include ample comments in the source code, immediately preceding this usage, explaining what is going on. Otherwise you risk creating a "pitfall" for future unwary maintenance programmers who might come along later and need to modify that code. (I suspect this is what Jon was alluding to, with his "never in a million years" remark.)

HTH,
Mark S. Waterbury