Re: Defining DS to retrieve variable length data from API

[Barbara Morris <bmorris@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Rory Hewitt wrote:
> I understand the first point (even though I'd like to think my naming is
> sufficiently understandable that it's pretty easy to correlate field names
> to the textual names in the documentation), but as for skipping meaningless
> fields, I just don't bother naming them, so they're effectively skipped
> anyway...

I meant that it's easier to correlate the exact RPG position to the 
documented position.  Even if your names are identical to the names in 
the documentation, say Length_of_message_returned, it can be difficult 
for a human to verify that a particular subfield is at the right 
position if all the subfields just follow each other.  (Maybe it's just 
me, since I sometimes can't even add 2 and 3 and get 6, but I find it 
difficult to add up the lengths of more than about ten subfields before 
I start to waver.)