De gustibus. To me the sparse form looks clearer.
Yes, if you refrain from assigning a value to delete then these are equivalent:
delete foo
'DELETE' foo
'DELETE 'foo
'DELETE ' || foo
Note that abuttal with separating blanks yields a single blank; if you want
multiple blanks then you must use, e.g., a literal.
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3
עַם יִשְׂרָאֵל חַי
נֵ֣צַח יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל לֹ֥א יְשַׁקֵּ֖ר
________________________________________
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> on behalf of
Andrew Rowley <and...@blackhillsoftware.com>
Sent: Monday, April 22, 2024 8:59 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: REXX vs other languages WAS: Rexx numeric digits and scientific
notation question
On 23/04/2024 12:01 am, Seymour J Metz wrote:
> delete foo
>
> rather than
>
> 'DELETE' foo
>
> is a simple example. In practise I often need multiple upper case constants
> in a single expression.
In this example, delete *looks like* an instruction rather than a
variable - the fact that it is a variable is likely to surprise people.
It seems to be setting up for a problem like:
if <condition> then
delete = 'yes'
...
if delete = yes then
delete foo
If I understand your example correctly,
delete foo
concatenates the values of the variable delete (which is 'DELETE' if
hasn't been initialized) and foo, inserting an implied blank between
them, then passes the result to an environment set up previously with an
ADDRESS statement?
This is what I want to avoid using SIGNAL ON NOVALUE.
To me, it is much clearer to be explicit, including the concatenation, e.g.
"DELETE " || foo
seems much clearer about exactly what is happening/expected, which are
variables and which are (expected to be) constant etc.
--
Andrew Rowley
Black Hill Software
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