On Thu, 19 Mar 2009 07:37:08 -0500, Ian S. Worthington wrote:
>Paul --
>
>What you say, viz:
>
>"Misusing "default"
>to describe the universal assignment can mislead the reader to
>believe that the construct merely defines a value to be used
>for members otherwise undefined."
>
>is absolutely true, but I would hazard a guess, based on my own 20+ years of
>rexx experience, that the vast majority of programmers only use, if they use
>at it at all, the construction
>
>x. = 'something'
>
>at the top of their programs, and then never change it.
>
>Is calling that a "default" strictly accurate? Of course not. But in the
>context of the original discussion, "does rexx support multi-dimensional
>arrays?" I think that to describe it otherwise in a list of additional
>features which might be of interest to a newcomer would be a severe case of
>TMI.
>
The infrequency of use of a facility fails to justify the incorrect
description. Rather, it aggravates the astonishment factor when
the programmer encounters the behavior, perhaps inadvertently.
Suppose:
X. = 'something'
do I = 1 to 10; X.I = 'defined'; end
drop X.7
say X.7
The description in the manual is correct; describing it with
the less specific term "default" might lead the programmer to
expect the program to say "something" rather than "X.7", or
at least to be uncertain.
>BTW, Unless I've misunderstood your point, I'm not sure that your sample
>program demonstrates the language feature we're discussing. (x. = 'universal'
>perhaps?)
>
I stand corrected. Lazy code copying and inadequate testing. (When
corrected, the output is the same.)
BTW, the APAR I've mentioned is OA17169, closed SUG in 2006, then
"The fix for this SUG APAR was shipped in the base for z/OS V1R9."
(IBM has lately updated FIN and SUG APARs when/if the fix is shipped.
Thanks, IBM.)
-- gil
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