RE: [EXTERNAL] Re: Learning RPG IV advanced techniques

My first place of programming - many decades ago - was on a UNIVAC 1108 - in COBOL
There was a command (I forget the syntax - thank the gods), but THAT changed a paragraph name to a GO TO some other paragraph
Hated it from the start as it always gave me conniptions when I was trying to debug a program as this code was NEVER anywhere near the paragraph name it was changing
It was in essence a first time through switch
When you say that was fun - that phrase NEVER came to mind - even sarcastically

Alan Shore
E-mail : ASHORE@xxxxxxxx
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‘If you're going through hell, keep going.’
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-----Original Message-----
From: RPG400-L [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Joe Pluta
Sent: Saturday, November 7, 2020 12:49 PM
To: rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: Learning RPG IV advanced techniques


I love inaccurately commented code!

As I was reading this, some old brain cells sparked and I remember that there was a specific syntax in EDL, GOTO *, that was INTENDED to be overwritten.  You put a label on the statement (MYGOTO: GOTO *) and then you change MYGOTO+2 to be the address where you really wanted to jump.

Oh my yes, that was fun!


On 11/7/2020 11:31 AM, Jon Paris wrote:

The S/36 RPG compiler was written in Assembler and did a lot of on-the-fly code changing. Spent days trying to debug a problem one time only to discover that you should never trust comments! The bit pattern being applied to modify the instruction did not do what the writer said it did!

On Nov 7, 2020, at 12:26 PM, Joe Pluta <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

My favorite language is probably still EDL for the Series/1. If you changed *-2, you were actually changing the PROGRAM CODE. That's how we did poor man's recursion. Ah, those were the days.

On 11/6/2020 3:37 PM, James H. H. Lampert wrote:

On 11/6/20 1:05 PM, Alan Campin wrote:

I have been corrected. Pascal and Modula 2 do support pointers.
They are just "type" safe. C and RPG pointers are not type safe.
They can point to anything.

The same is true of PL/I pointers. And of course, pointers in (LISP).

Pointers originated in PL/I. Not only did PL/I (1964) predate C (1972); it also predated B (1969) and BCPL (1967).

--
JHHL

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