Regrettably you can only set a default for the stem as a whole, not for a subset of the variable space.
Its one of my pet peeves. i ------ Original Message ------ Received: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 03:08:19 PM COT From: "Patrick O'Keefe" <patrick.oke...@wamu.net> To: IBM-MAIN@bama.ua.edu Subject: Re: Multi-dimensional arrays in REXX > On Wed, 18 Mar 2009 09:48:10 -0500, Ian S. Worthington > <ianworthing...@usa.net> wrote: > > >>> It implements them as a conceptual subset of stems, and > >>> they are indexed with strings rather than by integers which > >>>actually makes them rather more powerful once one breaks > >>>out of the array mindset. > > >> I'm not sure what you mean by the "array mindset"? > > >I refer to the tendency of programmers new to rexx stems, but > >familiar with hll arrays, to reduce their (non-numerical) problem > >to one of integral indices into arrays rather than make full use > >of the rexx stem facility. > >... > > I'm not new to REXX stems nor recently familiar with HLL arrays, > but *still* make REXX blunders based on array-think. > It's seductive. > > An individual compound variable can be assigned a value, and the > stem can be assigned a value. That's all there is with REXX stems. > You cannot assign a value to a "row" or a "column" (or any other > more abstract partitioning of the compound variable space) no > matter how much you might want to. > > I conceptually had a very non-array-like structure > BASE.i > BASE.key.n > Where i and n were integers and key was alphanumeric. > I wanted all BASE.key.n to be set to the value of key for a fixed set > of keys. But what I wanted doesn't count for much. > > FOO."BAR". = "BAR" is invalid. :-( > > I think my attempted logic came more from wishful thinking than > from any knowledge of HLL array processing. Even if more powerful > that arrays, there are limits to compund varaible processing in REXX. > > Pat O'Keefe > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO > Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
