Re: Cycle programs and control level breaks

["James H H Lampert" <jamesl@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Chris Pando" <chris.pando@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I no more go "out of my way" to avoid the cycle than I 
> do to avoid GOTOs.

Wrong.

It is IMPOSSIBLE to avoid The Cycle in RPG without going 
out of your way to do so. Maybe not very far out of your 
way, but you still have to do SOMETHING. There is not so 
much as a single non-cycle RPG program in existence that 
does not either use a RETURN statement (or RETRN for OPM), 
or at some point explicitly set the LR indicator to the 
"on" state, in order to keep The Cycle from iterating.

I stand by the main thrust of my argument: if you're not 
using either The Cycle, or the close integration between 
RPG and display files, or the ability to call external 
programs not known at compile time, then you should 
probably consider a language other than RPG. Conversely, 
if you're writing non-Cycle RPG programs that either walk 
through an entire file, or continue doing some action 
until they're told to stop, then you've probably got at 
least one more nesting level than your program truly 
needs.

--
JHHL