On Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:36:24 -0500, Paul Gilmartin <paulgboul...@aim.com> wrote:
>On Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:21:31 -0500, Ian S. Worthington wrote: > >>Regrettably you can only set a default for the stem as a whole, not for a >>subset of the variable space. >> >It is *not* a default, and Rexx documentation avoids >the possibly misleading use of "default" by a correct >description that: > > X. = 'blank' > >assigns [in effect] the value 'blank' to every possible >member of the compound variable with stem X. >... Whether or not this behavior fits the definition of "default", it does highlight the meaning of "stem". In the compund variable A.B.C.D the stem is "A.", not "A.B." or "A.B.C.", and only the stem or a whole compound variable can be assigned a value. Last I knew (and admitedly, that was 25 years ago) PL/I was even less flexable than that. You cfould assign a value to a whole dimension of an array, but that generated code to set every element in that dimension to that value. You can obviously do the same thing (explicitly) in REXX but that is a lot different (and a whole lot less efficient) than setting an initial value for otherwise unset elements of a compound variable. It would be tough for REXX to handle initilized stems differently, actually. 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
