Nested Functions

[Pickering, John (NORBORD)]

Chris Sharman wrote ...
>Don't forget the very nice new formatnumber function, which does
>almost everything you could want in formatting numbers, and much
>more elegantly than rj ascii [:] etc.
>
>Documented in the VMS 7.10F New features manual: don't know
>when/if it made it to other platforms.
>
>It would be nice to have a similar formatdate function: they're even
>harder to display nicely in info messages - please ?

The formatnumber function is a Compaq version only nicety. It isn't in the
8.xx versions. But perhaps one of the benefits to the rest of us of
"Compaqising" version 8 is that Cognos will need to add it to the "common
code stream" 8.x0 version (in order to get Compaq users to accept it) and
then we'll all have it!

It seems to me that adding new functions to PH must be one of the simplest
kinds of enhancements. Since they're new there's no old syntax to break and
no compatibility with old versions to test. Just do it!

And a formatdate function as suggested by Chris would remove so many lines
of my code that I might be compelled to raise my dollars per line of code
rates :-)

How many times have you coded something like the following? Sigh :-(

DEFINE D-RPT-TITLE CHAR*45 &
  =    "Issues by Equipment from " &
     + ASCII(D-FROM-DATE OF MMF195,8)[3:2] + "/" &
     + ASCII(D-FROM-DATE OF MMF195,8)[5:2] + "/" &
     + ASCII(D-FROM-DATE OF MMF195,8)[7:2] &
     + " to " &
     + ASCII(D-TO-DATE   OF MMF195,8)[3:2] + "/" &
     + ASCII(D-TO-DATE   OF MMF195,8)[5:2] + "/" &
     + ASCII(D-TO-DATE   OF MMF195,8)[7:2]

John "sadly remembering the days of product enhancements" Pickering
Toronto
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Subscribe: "subscribe powerh-l" in message body to majordomo@lists.swau.edu
Unsubscribe: "unsubscribe powerh-l" in message to majordomo@lists.swau.edu
powerh-l@lists.swau.edu is gatewayed one-way to bit.listserv.powerh-l
This list is closed, thus to post to the list, you must be a subscriber.