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Re: Need an example CALL USING RETURNING

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In article <uusa0a$2oiji$1@paganini.bofh.team>,
R Daneel Olivaw  <Danny@hyperspace.vogon.gov> wrote:
>docdwarf@panix.com wrote:

[snip]

>> I've sorked in shops where the SEARCH verb was forbidden, spit out by
>> pre-compiling tools, because 'people get confused by it' (or Chief Senior
>> Programmer didn't understand it).  Same with SORT.  Same with INSPECT
>> REPLACING because 'you Never Know when the subroutine will be wanted in
>> the Online region and that's a Bad Thing.'
>> 
>> It's frustrating but... their shop, their rules.  Find where they keep
>> their skels ('templates'), read the code and learn their songs.'

[snip]

>I have never worked on a site where SEARCH or INSPECT REPLACING were 
>forbidden, that's ludicrous.

Their checks to me cleared the bank.  Early on in my career I figured that 
if the shop had been kept 'healthy' they wouldn't have need of my skills.

One place required an In Progress folder that contained source listings 
and copies of the File Descriptors, a hex dump of a data record and the 
fields underlined and bracketed (kind of [__FLD1__]]__FLD2__] 'for 
documentation'.  I found out they had access to FileAid, a utility that 
would print out a list of

01  FILE01REC.
    05 FLD1 (X06): 'VALUE1'.
    05 FLD2 (X06): 'VALUE2'.
    05 FLD3 (906): 000003.

... and so on.  I started putting those into my folders and it garnered 
notice, the Group Lead said it made life a lot easier and I ought to put 
together some samples and documentation for the other programmers...

... but since that wasn't part of the Work Order that paid me he wanted me 
to do it on my own time.

I said 'You've got to be joking' and his response was 'I'm as serious as a 
heart attack, on your own time and within a week.'

I laughed, said something about a snowball fight in Hades and he actually 
made noises indicating that if I didn't give free time for this my 
contract might be 'reconsidered'.

I said 'If I'm not here then you're sure not to get this.  If I'm not paid 
for my hours then you're sure not to get it.  If you can get a forty-hour 
work order cut so I can dedicate a week to this your people will love you 
and you'll make back that money from time saved by your team in the first 
week afterwards.  I'm going to lunch.'

He got the work order, I put together JCL and control statements and 
documentation, the next week at least three people stopped by my cube and 
said 'You've made our lives so much easier!'...

... and at the end of that week I gave my two weeks' notice, that place 
was too sick even for me to tolerate.

>SORT is a bit different, some of the programs I wrote ran in Transaction 
>environments, and there were memory constraints.  These programs did not 
>normally perform any sorting anyway, but in one case - sorting a table 
>in memory - I actually managed to get a C sorting library to work for me.
>"Transaction environments" could be "Online" in your terminology.

That hearkens back to 'no INSPECTs because it might go online', yes.  I 
had a situation about twenty-five years ago where the input was a 
multiple-record-type dataset, similar to a header-rec for customer info 
and then a bunch of transactions under it; I got some COBOL from... maybe 
it was Mr Mosely, maybe from Mr Svalgaard's (sp?) ETKPAK, it bubble-sorted 
the transactions in date sequence so a spiffy set of tallies could be 
kept... it's still running in Prod, somewhere.

They were giants in those days.

DD

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Need an example CALL USING RETURNING Bruce Axtens <snetxa@hotmail.com> - 2024-04-06 09:46 +0800
  Re: Need an example CALL USING RETURNING Arnold Trembley <arnold.trembley@att.net> - 2024-04-06 04:38 -0500
  Re: Need an example CALL USING RETURNING R Daneel Olivaw <Danny@hyperspace.vogon.gov> - 2024-04-06 13:47 +0200
  Re: Need an example CALL USING RETURNING Bruce Axtens <snetxa@hotmail.com> - 2024-04-06 20:29 +0800
    Re: Need an example CALL USING RETURNING docdwarf@panix.com () - 2024-04-06 13:04 +0000
      Re: Need an example CALL USING RETURNING Bruce Axtens <snetxa@hotmail.com> - 2024-04-06 21:11 +0800
        Re: Need an example CALL USING RETURNING docdwarf@panix.com () - 2024-04-06 17:04 +0000
      Re: Need an example CALL USING RETURNING R Daneel Olivaw <Danny@hyperspace.vogon.gov> - 2024-04-06 22:06 +0200
        Re: Need an example CALL USING RETURNING docdwarf@panix.com () - 2024-04-07 01:42 +0000
  Re: Need an example CALL USING RETURNING "Vincent Coen" <VBCoen@gmail.com> - 2024-04-06 23:27 +0100

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