On 11/21/2011 3:02 PM, John Gilmore wrote:
You have a response that apparently meets your needs.
Your question interests me for another reason. I asked two admittedly
very bright 15 year olds to write a parameterized--a value V, a field
of length L, and a one-origin offset O of its first byte--PL/I
procedure to do what you want to do.
It took them 10 and 13 minutes, respectively, to come up with correct,
working procedures complete with bullet proofing and test cases.
The use of the SORT to do this job seems to me to be much akin to
using a piledriver to set a ten-penny nail., and I should be
interested to know why you sought a canned solution to a problem of
this sort.
John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA
John,
It's the wave of the future. Actually, the wave of the present:
if I create it myself I will have to think. If I can take a
canned solution, the bulk of the thinking is done for me.
How many times have you seen people on this list say, proudly
even, "I'm lazy so ... ".
From a more practical standpoint: it's efficient to use existing
art. (Not counting the time it takes to find the existing art,
such as querying on ibm-main.)
The whole mantra of "code reuse" has always struck me as sort of
disengenuous. Java is not the only language that can create
methods that can be used by many other programs. Think subroutines.
But in large shops I have seen the number of subroutines be so
overwhelming that it's often easier to roll your own. So now
we get a proliferation of subroutines (or methods) available but
no one knows how to find them or use them (except for, perhaps,
the most frequently used 10%).
So it goes.
--
Kind regards,
-Steve Comstock
The Trainer's Friend, Inc.
303-355-2752
http://www.trainersfriend.com
* To get a good Return on your Investment, first make an investment!
+ Training your people is an excellent investment
* Try our tool for calculating your Return On Investment
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