Re: Count String

["SJL" <sjl_abc@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bill Brosch wrote:

>   Right, but look at the process from a different perspective:
>
>   Rather than searching for the answer to this question Srinivas asks his
>   question here.  He is then able to continue working on a different part of
>   his project without stopping to do this (simplistic) research.  After he
>   finishes the other part of his project, he can then come back here & get
>   the answer.
>
>   By not doing the research himself, he has:
>   Saved time by not doing the research
>   Multi-tasked by having someone else get him the answer


Bill -
My hope is that you're being sarcastic with your answer above.

If not, the problem with Srinivas' approach is that he will probably not retain the
information for very long when one of us _gives_ him the answer.  The next time he has the
same problem, he'll probably ask the same question again...here.

Over the last 27 years as a programmer and consultant I have worked with two types of
programmers:
A) the programmer that has 20 years of experience,
and
B) the programmer that has 1 year of experience 20 times...

Typically, more of them have been type B than type A, and the type B guys keep coming back
to me with the same questions over and over.

I don't appreciate being treated like a help desk lackey.  For questions like this, I
either don't respond at all or I don't respond with a direct answer.

If I do respond, I'm more likely to say RTFM and give a link to the RPG reference in the
IBM Infocenter.  This way he has to to some of the legwork _himself_ and he'll probably
retain the knowledge, and better yet, next time he already has the link for the manual and
should go there FIRST to search.

By the way, if you perform a Google search on 'string length rpg',
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4DMUS_enUS204US204&q=string+length+rpg
the first link is to a table on Cozzi's web site showing a list of built-in functions...

- sjl