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Date:	Fri, 13 Feb 2004 10:04:29 PST8
From:	"Lynn H. Maxson" <lmaxson@pacbell.net >
Reply-To:	scoug-programming@scoug.com
To:	< "scoug-programming@scoug.com" > scoug-programming@scoug.com >
Subject:	SCOUG-Programming: call(TZ) ? - PL/I

Content Type: text/plain

Peter,

I've done contract software using PL/I and the OS/2 APIs. In
one instance we were involved in writing a centralized
database administration system with remote support for all
the major operating systems at the time, including Windows,
OS/2, Novell, and UNIX. We had the OS/2 portion. I gained
considerable experience with the C interface used by OS/2.

The BEGIN statement in PL/I has two functions. One, to mark
the beginning of an "ON" code subroutine, for which purpose
they could have easily used the "PROC" statement. The
second function allows a redeclaration of a variable within a
code segment to differentiate it from an identically named
variable in the same procedure but outside the code segment.
That would allow two or more programmers to independently
write segments of a program without concern for the variable
names used.

Today except for "ON" conditions the "BEGIN" statement does
not occur. I would probably favor the "END" statement as it is
the common terminator for the "PROC", "BEGIN", "SELECT",
and "DO" statements. However, I feel the most important is
probably the assignment statement in its support of aggregate
operands as well as allowing mixed operators (string,
arithmetic, and boolean) within an expression. I don't want to
slight the PL/I builtin functions either. Or maybe even the
"SIGNAL" statement which supports programmer- as well as
system-defined interrupts, i.e. exception conditions. Nah,
there are too many important ones which somehow K&R in
defining C regarded as "unnecessary" and the C++ along with
the JAVA people have had to introduce. Someday maybe
they will catch up. It's only taken them 30 years to get this
far.

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