Re: *NOPASS and %parms

[Simon Coulter <shc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 05/04/2007, at 11:19 PM, Johan Vangilbergen wrote:

> When I run this interactively, all goes well.  However, if I run this 
> in
> batch, the procedure crashes on the "Clear Key2" statement, saying that
> the pointer or location was not referenced.
>
> What am I missing ?

First, have the courtesy to put a SUBJECT line in your appends.

Second, this code runs interactively simply by GOOD LUCK. There just 
happen to be two old pointers on the stack after the two you pass when 
calling this procedure. These old pointers are from some other previous 
call to a procedure or program that was passed four or more parameters 
by reference. In batch it just happens that those old parameters aren't 
present so you get the pointer reference error.

Although your procedure "appears" to work interactively it is actually 
CLEARing storage it has no right to address. That can cause other, much 
subtler, errors which can be difficult to resolve. Again the fact that 
this procedure runs interactively without causing problems is simply 
good luck.

The resulting learning experience should be:
        IF A PARAMETER WASN'T PASSED THEN DON'T REFERENCE IT IN CODE.

Other's have pointed out the coding defects that contribute to this 
problem but no-one bothered to explain it. If my explanation is 
insufficient then search the archives. There are previous discussions 
on this very problem.

Regards,
Simon Coulter.
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