John, Your "cool idea" is (was?) actually known as the "Drumheller Trick", and along with some smoke & mirrors was used to great advantage in years gone by John Drumheller (to show how much faster "Information" was than classic Pick :-)
The actual way you would typically work would be more like SELECT FILE WITH <insert conditions> SAVING DO.TASK That way your routine only gets fired "when needed" based on selection criteria Ross Ferris Stamina Software Visage > Better by Design! -----Original Message----- From: u2-users-boun...@listserver.u2ug.org [mailto:u2-users-boun...@listserver.u2ug.org] On Behalf Of Israel, John R. Sent: Tuesday, 26 June 2012 3:24 AM To: 'U2 Users List' Subject: Re: [U2] Regarding: use of I - Descriptor Satya, Roughly speaking, and I-Desc is a way to manipulate the data so that you can select or display data in other ways. You can get data from another file, perform some math on multiple fields, concatenate data, call a basic subroutine, or any combination of these. You can have multiple commands within an I-Desc with each piece separated by a semi-colon, and then take action based on each "piece" of the code. You can even put alternate indexes on I-Desc, though this can lead to serious problems if you are indexing a translate. You generally cannot do updates with an I-Desc, though if the I-Desc called a subroutine, you COULD do anything but I have never seen this done (and with very good reason). On a wild tangent to what I just said, I have always thought how easy (in a purest way) that you COULD perform some task like month end by having a file with special record and an I-Desc that DOES run update subroutines (yeah I know, I just said not to do that, but the idea is cool). If set up correctly, you COULD simply run your month end by sorting the special file with the I-Desc. For example: SORT MONTH.END.CTL DO.TASK Where DO.TASK is an I-Desc that calls a subroutine that knows what to do based on the key of each record. Again, NOT a good idea, but the capability is there. John -----Original Message----- From: u2-users-boun...@listserver.u2ug.org [mailto:u2-users-boun...@listserver.u2ug.org] On Behalf Of satya satya Sent: Monday, June 25, 2012 12:10 PM To: U2 Users List Subject: [U2] Regarding: use of I - Descriptor Hi, Could any one of you explain What is I - Descriptor and What is the use of it. Thank you, Satya _______________________________________________ U2-Users mailing list U2-Users@listserver.u2ug.org http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users _______________________________________________ U2-Users mailing list U2-Users@listserver.u2ug.org http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users _______________________________________________ U2-Users mailing list U2-Users@listserver.u2ug.org http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
