Re: AW: Should RPG programmers be dynamically allocating memory? was: theadvantages of garbage collection

[vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxx]

For amazing help with all these issues, especially pointers and the C functions, get the 2nd Edition of APIs at Work from MC Press - Bruce Vining formerly Mr. API at IBM did the revision - fantastic!

There are several APIs that might need reallocation of memory to accomodate the variable portion - then you just use based DS's to get at the data there - to a C programmer it is almost child's play but not too bad once you try a few examples.

Bruce - I'm always learning something new from you!

Vern

-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: "Schmidt, Mihael" <Mihael.Schmidt@xxxxxxxxxxx> 

> I can only agree to this. Though i think most RPG programs don't need dynamic 
> structures, there definitly are a lot of uses for such dynamically sized 
> structures if they were easily available to the RPG programmer. That is 
> definitly something IBM has missed to implement for the RPG community. 
>
> They have made a try by porting the Glib C functions to ILE C and made a service 
> program of the modules. But the version is a bit dated and with the Glib 
> functions you have to manage the allocated memory "on your own", which means 
> that it is not so easily to use as it should be IMO (and they didn't release the 
> prototypes to the procedures). 
>
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- 
> Von: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] Im 
> Auftrag von Adam Glauser 
> Gesendet: Montag, 23. Juni 2008 16:17 
> An: rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx 
> Betreff: Should RPG programmers be dynamically allocating memory? was: 
> theadvantages of garbage collection 
>
> Joe Pluta wrote: 
> > You 
> > either do your own memory management (the C model), or you relegate it 
> > to the runtime (the Java model). Technically, RPG follows the C model, 
> > but very few programmers ever need to allocate memory. If you're 
> > writing code that requires a lot of memory allocation, you're either 
> > doing something you oughtn't to be doing, or you're as smart as Scott 
> > Klement and you will do the memory management correctly. 
>
> I'm not entirely convinced that few programmers need to allocate memory. 
> How often do we RPG programmers put hard limits in our programs, 
> simply because using a dynamically sized structure is tricky? 
>
> Perhaps this is part of the reason we don't have as many tool libraries 
> as are available in other languages, as lamented by Tom Liotta in the 
> "RPG is Dead" thread.