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

[John Reagan]

On Wednesday, January 21, 2015 at 3:21:36 PM UTC-5, Chris Scheers wrote:
> 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.

Absolutely, that is why I objected (pardon the pun) to the use of the word
'object' in the original discussion.  For the DCL extension, it felt more
like a structured return.  Not smart at all.  Quite different from the
Python/Perl examples provided later in the thread.

And I'm certainly not going to add real objects & methods to DCL.  You'll
see object oriented COBOL before that. (and yes, the COBOL standard
did add object-oriented).  And to be clear, you won't see OO COBOL either.
I wouldn't mind some things beyond COBOL85 but that isn't one.  [I just spent
the last 1.5 years working on NonStop COBOL among other things.]