Re: Prototyping printf()

["Simon Coulter" <shc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Hello Hans,

You wrote:
>Exsqueeze me?  Why care about C's printf function at all?  The
>main reason C has this weird function is to make up for it's
>poor string handling support.  Why not use RPG's native string
>handling capabilities to build the string before output?  You
>can easily concatenate strings using the + operator and you can
>easily convert numeric to char using %CHAR, %EDITC, and %EDITW.
>RPG's string support is easily miles ahead of C, so why not
>take advantage of it?

I don't really care.  It just started as a Q&D approach which piqued my 
curiosity and 
lead to some experimentation.  Using RPG's conversion functions and passing 
everything as 
strings is what I ended up doing for describing the final prototype. 

>(Mind you, we do realize that RPG, or rather the AS/400 in
>general, needs better operational descriptor support which might
>make prototyping printf easier.  But printf is a bad example for
>justifying that.)

Then don't use printf() as justification :)  but move it up the list please!  
Although I 
don't see operational descriptors helping in this case (unless I wanted to 
write my own 
printf-like function in which case I would need to know the data types).  This 
problem is 
all in differences between language parameter passing preferences -- VALUE vs. 
REFERENCE 
-- and prototyping limitations.  But now you guys know that at least some of us 
want that 
sort of support so I'm sure it'll get on the ToDo list  :)

Regards,
Simon Coulter.

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