[Info-vax] DCL's flaws (both scripting and UI)

[Chris Scheers]

John Reagan wrote:
> On Monday, January 19, 2015 at 3:40:48 PM UTC-5, Simon Clubley wrote:
> 
>> You would keep f$parse for compatibility with existing DCL code and
>> it would continue to return individual strings, but you could also
>> have a (say) sys package with a differently named f$parse returning an
>> object containing all the parsed fields in one go.
> 
> You mean like SYS$FILESCAN?  What's your issue with multiple calls to F$PARSE?  The overhead?  You are writing in DCL after all...
> 
> And you want the lexical to populate all the fields even if you aren't going to use them?  Isn't that more expensive?  Imagine the overhead  of collecting ALL the GETJPI fields or ALL the GETQUI fields?  Ugh.

That doesn't follow.  One of the advantages of OO is that the 
implementation is hidden.

There is no requirement to collect the values before they are used.

Some values may be collected when they are returned, some when the 
object is created, some may even be collected before the object is created.

Hopefully, the implementation is written to do the "smart" thing.

And when problems are found, the implementation can be fixed without 
breaking (hopefully) the higher level programs.

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Chris Scheers, Applied Synergy, Inc.

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