I don't know about your question. But herewith a brief side hike: I have always been inclined to experiment with systems, hoping to find sense in what seemed like senseless behavior and looking for shortcuts. (Apparently I was born to be a programmer.) When I was handed a form to fill out, and the form appeared to be a copy of a copy of a too-many-times copy, I wondered why people don't pay more attention to such things. With the advent of half-decent WYSIWYG software I took to creating my own cleaned-up version of the same form, and using that instead, much to the bemusement of the poor clerk who'd never seen that form. If I tried submitting a form with different information than was spelled out (hoping to discover which fields were necessary and which were optional), I might be asked "why do you want to do that?" and told "Don't waste my time playing!"
So when I discovered computer programming, I loved it that a computer never asked me "why do you want to do that?" when I experimented with alternate syntax on a command. "Because I want to see what works, of course!", except the machine didn't care. It was wonderful. Therefore when I gradually became a SME myself, subject to people asking how to do something, for a long time I never asked "Why?", because I remember how I disliked it myself. Eventually, though, it dawned on me that in many cases - not all - if I find out what the OP is trying to accomplish, and I point out that the better way of doing it is thus and so, I've actually HELPED. I still feel strongly about letting people try things out to see what works, but if what they really care about is finding a way that works, asking "Why do you want to do that?" often leads to a better solution for them. I'm not asking "Why?" in this case, because I don't care; I don't know the answer anyway. I'm just sayin'. --- Bob Bridges, robhbrid...@gmail.com, cell 336 382-7313 /* There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any more than in offering to fight one's grandmother. The really courageous man is he who defies tyrannies young as the morning and superstitions fresh as the first flowers. The only true free-thinker is he whose intellect is as much free from the future as from the past. -from "What's Wrong with the World" by G K Chesterton */ -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of Robert Garrett Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2023 19:08 I love symbols. I've been trying to figure out if a level of indirection is possible. Here's an example that both doesn't work and isn't' even syntactically correct, but hopefully will serve to illustrate what I'm trying to do: //SYM1 SET SYM1=VALUE1 //SYM2 SET SYM2=VALUE2 //TARGET SET TARGET=SYM1 //RESULT SET RESULT=&&TARGET (and end up with &RESULT being set to VALUE1 and not SYM1) I know it'll be tempting to ask "why?" but trust me, I have a good reason. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
