Re: One last shot at Namespace and Structure
On Mon, 18 Oct 1999 11:00:33 -0400, Lucius L. Hilley III <lhilley at CDC.NET>
wrote:
> This first desire of fixed length fields is easily obtainable.
>I will see about creating some code to do just that in the near future.
>If you know that all fields are fixed length then you can easily,
>randomly read and/or edit any record without having to read the entire
>file. Thus is the nature of fixed length fields and records.
>
I have been programming such things since 1966. I was using the simplest
case to demonstrate what, at minimum, should be accomplished by the changes
I am requesting. A byproduct of solving that issue at the interpreter level
will be the ability to do many other things. I would, however, welcome the
IO routines to access random fixed records. The post was really aimed at Mr.
Craig, with the secondary purpose of clarifying to many of the other posters
what IMO are the minimum goals to be accomplished by all the various
specific and theoretical discussions that have occurred on namespaces and
structures.
In the process of reading all that material, I stumbled on one post from Rob
that basically promised that "something" would be done in namespaces as a
very high priority...only with a Linux Alpha coming first. By the timing of
that post, I hope that namespaces will be dealt with in the next release(2.2
or 3.0 depending on how important he regards it as). I am hoping that
release will occur before the New Year. I have some things that I would like
to do in this language, but am unwilling to attempt until I see the type of
facilities that I have requested.
Your contributions to the discussion have been most thoughtful, and I have
enjoyed them. However good your routines for naming fixed fields might be,
it is most likely that they will conflict with whatever final solution is
implemented. I would be most interested in seeing and even playing with such
a set of routines for small utility programs, but I would be unwilling to
use them in any large undertaking. I thing that such a set of routines might
act as a model to Rob for whatever solution that he is contemplating. Proofs
of concept are always useful testbeds for ideas. Please inform me if or when
you do your routines.
Just as an aside, the first language that I ever used for fixed file repair
and reporting is still probably the easiest that I have ever seen. It was
one of the first "3rd generation" languages called EasyTreve by Pansophic.
One used offset and length with a name to describe only the fields that one
was interested in. All IO was basically automatic unless something other
than simple in and out was being done. Files were specified at execution
time in the JCL(Job Control Language for those too young to know).
Initially, the language had no branching or looping capability. Each record
was handled by the logic of the routine. When the end of the code was
reached, another record was read and the code re-executed. Later, some other
facilities were added, but it was very simple and quite powerful, especially
for it's time(1974). With that tool, I could produce reports and make
changes in less than one hour that required as much as two to three months
for the COBOL programmers to accomplish.
Everett L.(Rett) Williams
rett at gvtc.com
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