Re: Where to post ideas for RPG

On Mon, Aug 22, 2016 at 7:46 AM, Mark Murphy/STAR BASE Consulting Inc.
<mmurphy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[Mark]

P.S. Every language except embedded SQL would have the same problem that RPG has. Namely the call is strongly typed, down to the precision and scale of the
parameters and return value. So I can't cover every possible option in a single sub-procedure regardless of the language.

[John]

Well, not *every* language. You definitely would not have that problem
in [various IBM i scripting languages, for example]

[Mark]

Given that the context was creating a procedure to be called from RPG to simulate %min and %max functions, yes every language that can be called from RPG as a function, and return a value, can Python even do that, would have the same issues. The reason is, and the limitation of RPG sub-procedure parameters, is that parameters are always strongly typed. I can't just say, this is a number, and any number will work. In fact, unless I use floats, I have to specify the number of decimal positions, and that precludes numbers with more decimal positions, or If I provide the maximum possible decimal positions, that severely limits the size of the integer portion of the number. And floats have their own issues since they are not exact numbers.

That's not the context, though. I mean, folks were even bringing up
RUNSQL as a solution, albeit a convoluted one. If that's a solution,
then scripting languages sure as hell are too.

If you are saying that whatever solution anyone comes up with must be
wrapped in an RPG subprocedure, and that subprocedure is what is
limiting with regard to types, then even embedded SQL, as in SQLRPGLE,
is **NOT** an acceptable solution, because it has to be wrapped in
type-limiting RPG too!

Your initial quote, as I've included above, states that you feel
embedded SQL meets the requirements. Therefore, so do a number of
other dynamic languages.

I have to stress that no one is saying any of these is a *better*
solution than just writing things in vanilla RPG and being done
already.

John Y.