Re: Using the RPG Cycle

On Fri, Apr 28, 2017 at 3:11 PM, <dlclark@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

So, in
RPG, if I have L1, L2, and L3 defined then I have to also define 4
different accumulator fields and accumulate them myself in c-specs?

Well, if you take a lawyerly reading of that, the answer is no,
because you don't have to define exactly four accumulators. You can
break without totaling, or you can total more than one value per
break. But if you want to accumulate anything, you have to explicitly
do it yourself. RPG will not auto-total anything.

OK, I got the following working. My question is, is this the best
that can be done from the perspective of using free-form as much as
possible?

Not sure. I think so, but it's a question for someone better at RPG
than I am to answer definitively.

Too bad IBM didn't give us special subroutine names for the
control levels like BEGSR *INL1, BEGSR *INL2, ... BEGSR *INLR so that we
could eliminate a few more fixed-format C-specs when using control breaks.
I wonder if they'd be amenable to accepting an RFE in this area?

I agree special subroutine names would have been nice, and there's no
reason you couldn't submit the RFE, but I think its chances of
acceptance would be minimal. I doubt IBM would want to invest ANY
resources to anything that might be an encouragement to use the cycle.

John Y.