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

[Simon Clubley]

On 2015-01-21, John Reagan <xyzzy1959 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
>

Actually, I do see them as actual objects and not just some aggregate
return. I also see the datatype of the object returned for a queue
itself as being distinct from the datatype returned for an entry (for
example).

Also, if you look at queues.py as posted by Jan-Erik, you will see that
most of the attributes of a queue (for example) are returned in one go.
I'm looking at the itemlist built in class Queue starting on line 57 and
the _getqui definition starting on line 321.

> 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.]

Ok. :-) How about the DCL UI issues I raised ?

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
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