Re: RPG colon as delimiter

On Wed, Jul 20, 2016 at 12:50 PM, CRPence <crpbottle@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 20-Jul-2016 09:38 -0500, Raul A Jager W wrote:

<<SNIP>> Other "funny" thing in RPG is the use of "colon" between
parameter or indexes, and that is because in "the rest of the world"
the comma is used to mark the decimals. In other languages we must
adopt the "decimal point" when writing programs.

Perhaps the choice of colon (:) as delimiter is "funny" [meaning unusual
or strange, not meaning humorous] to some people, but that choice is quite
"sensible" [meaning logical and intelligent], to those for whom making
considerations for the /global/ nature of programming is important.

I think you restated exactly the point Raul was trying to make.

Too bad the originators of the SQL did not make a similarly sensible
choice, so that irrespective the locale of the programmer, requests like
VALUES(1,2) would be unambiguous.

You have an absolutely valid point, but SQL could have also chosen to
REQUIRE a space between parameters (whether in place of or in addition
to having another separator character like comma or colon or
whatever).

So, while it is not a perfect solution, one beneficial habit to get
into is to use spaces between values. I have seen this convention
spelled out in some style guides (notably for Java and Python, but I'm
confident plenty of others make the same recommendation).

John Y.