On 3/8/2011 8:06 AM, John Walker wrote:
I imagine I was not clear enough in my previous post. What I meant to emphasize was that macros are obscure, and not worth the effort. I did NOT imply they were useless. I tried to imply that IBM uses them, and uses them well.
The macros you see from IBM in libraries like SYS1.MACLIB only scratch the surface of what macros can do. Like most serious assembler language programmers, we leverage macros in ways that save dozens of programming hours and reduce or eliminate common errors. For example, we have macros that generate DSECTs and the tables on which they operate from blank delimited tabular input that the macro obtains with AREAD, converts to hard-to-code assembler syntax (with DCs, parens, commas and the like), and then emits the product of the conversion back into the source using AINSERT. These tables used to be difficult to create and maintain: doing so was a time consuming and error prone exercise. Now updating them is trivial. Sounds like I've just found my next presentation topic for SHARE in Orlando. ;-) -- Edward E Jaffe Phoenix Software International, Inc 831 Parkview Drive North El Segundo, CA 90245 310-338-0400 x318 [email protected] http://www.phoenixsoftware.com/
