On 2015-01-22, at 06:54, Tony Thigpen wrote:
> I have used longer-than-8 macros for many years. Works great. I have one
> source macro that I include at the top of the member that is just 8
> characters long. Inside, it has many macro 'redefs' so that I can use a long
> macro name in the code, but it gets converted to a shorter 8 character macro
> before going out to the library to get the macro.
>
> A short example:
>
> MACRO
> &NAME PERFORM_ON &ADDR,&BAD_VALUE=
> &NAME PERFORMO &ADDR,BAD_VALUE=&BAD_VALUE
> MEND
>
An excellent refutation of those who insist that 8 characters
are all that anybody should ever need. or that 44 characters
are all that anybody should ever need. Those limits impel
users such as you to reinvent that wheel repeatedly, repeatedly.
Of course, the z/OS UNIX filesystem has far more generous limits.
If only HLASM would exploit them as XLC does ...
BTW, it's regrettable that HLASM has no constructs such as POSIX
shell has to designate the entire argument list (viz. "$@").
I could imagine the renamed macro call as something such as:
&NAME PERFORMO &(1-*)
... where "&(1-*)" would mean the entire argument list. Likewise,
an analogue of "shift N" to delete the first n arguments and shift
the remaining ones left N positions could be very useful, often
removing the requirement to code tedious loops.
-- gil
