Paul Gilmartin's point---that consistent values among DDLIST, DESERV, and BLDL outputs is desirable---is important. Its importance would indeed be hard to exaggerate.
Moreover, the time for jibbing at mixed-case values in reporting contexts is long past. They are not, as they should be, usable everywhere. They will not be usable everywhere soon. They are, however, usable in some wheres; and service macros and the like should no longer ignore them. IBM is a large, sprawling organization; and for this reason alone it has always had difficulty reusing even code that is clearly reusable. Even when one knows that something has already been done many times, [re]writing a small block of code that does it yet again is often easier than finding and reusing code 'owned' by another entity and then coordinating its subsequent maintenance. Still, two code sequences that notionally address the same functional objective are all but certain to do some things differently. These differences grate. Worse, they complicate simple tasks that ought not to be problematic. All these things said, the underlying problem is an intractable one; and moralistic posturings about it are unhelpful. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
