Re: The Day the Music Dies (was: RE: backup spool file)

[rob@xxxxxxxxx]

That's called a "variable length field" on the i5.  People don't use them 
because they weren't available on the S/38 and they refuse to change.
Some might say the extra 2 byte overhead for a variable length field might 
waste $2.73 in disk space and they can't afford that on a measly 6-9 byte 
field.
The fun part would be now adding an offset field to any api data 
structures to support changing this field to variable length.

Rob Berendt
-- 
Group Dekko Services, LLC
Dept 01.073
PO Box 2000
Dock 108
6928N 400E
Kendallville, IN 46755
http://www.dekko.com





James Rich <james@xxxxxxxxxxx> 
Sent by: midrange-l-bounces+rob=dekko.com@xxxxxxxxxxxx
12/14/2004 03:31 PM
Please respond to
Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>


To
Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
cc

Subject
Re: The Day the Music Dies (was:  RE: backup spool file)






On Tue, 14 Dec 2004, Al Barsa wrote:

> You can always make a command parameter bigger.
>
> The problem is what do you do with fields for system output files.  The
> output file for DSPOBJD has three fields, ODCPVR, ODCVRM and ODPVRM 
which
> are all six bytes long.  If you change the length of these fields, this
> will cause logic in programs to break.

And Vern wrote:

> The SYSLVL parameter of RTVOBJD takes a 9-character variable. The format 
is
> VnnRnnMnn. But, as Al says, there are lots of places that use 
6-character
> format - not the least being all the TGTRLS parameters, which are now
> defined as *CHAR-8.

Why use fixed lengths at all?  Make the VRM be a "string" that can be any 
length.  Heck, in linux you can even add your own custom tag to the "VRM" 
(i.e. something like 2.6.9-we_did_this) and all the tools handle it just 
fine.  Why couldn't the iSeries do something similar?

James Rich

It's not the software that's free; it's you.
                 - billyskank on Groklaw
--
This is the Midrange Systems Technical Discussion (MIDRANGE-L) mailing 
list
To post a message email: MIDRANGE-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/midrange-l
or email: MIDRANGE-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
at http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l.