Re: IFS files and VARPG

["Larry Ducie" <Larry_Ducie@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Marco,
 
I totally agree with what you are saying. I'm not suggesting that open() et
al are part of the RPG language. I understand that they are provided as part
of an external interface to the file system. That is why, in my last mail I
said: "Thanks to the unix system interface I can easily work with file
descriptors (this also includes sockets) in RPG." But remember - those APIs
were not available to RPG until ILE came along. Somebody had to "change the
environment" to allow this to happen for RPG. The same thing could have been
provided for VARPG. But, I suppose it is really just a case of interfacing
the Win32 kernel rather than using F-specs. I guess it might have been
better for the VARPG compilers to spend more time documenting how to use the
Win32 DLLs rather than writing F-spec support for stream files. Maybe we
need a "Who Knew.." for VARPG. :-)
 
Anyway, I suppose the thrust of my argument is this: I don't think RPG
really needs time spent on it to add F-spec support for working with stream
files. Especially if the argument for the change is to "make it more like
VARPG".
 
But, all things considered, I guess my role in this argument is rather moot
anyway. For two reasons.
 
1) I really can't imagine such F-spec support would ever, ever be provided
in RPG so I probably don't need to support the "no change" position anyway.
 
2) I write all my client code in java anyway. I tried VARPG. I liked it but
I couldn't help but feel it was something like what RPG IV would be like in
a parallel, rather naff, universe. It was familiar and yet weirdly
different. When I tried it I found all of the examples (and there wasn't
many at the time) were in fixed format with none of the newer built-in
support for actions and attribute changes. In RPG I write free-form and
never need to use subroutines, but VARPG was plagued with them. I mean, an
"action subroutine" - how quaint. But at the end of the day, I just found
java much easier - I assumed everything would be different in java so there
was no surprises. VARPG was just, I don't know, it just felt a bit
"rubbish". Stupid reason to not take to it, but there you are. :-)
 
Cheers
 
Larry