I learned M years ago. I knew Fortran and Basic. I found that 80+% of the commands and functions in M had equivalents in M. The M commands and functions usually had more features than the equivalent Basic ones. But it helped me to think in those terms, like Basic has a Print command and M has a Write command. The ability to reference global variables and sparse arrays is much richer in M. The next transition is to then learn how to use the Fileman APIs. That took many more months to learn and start to become proficient. It helped tremendously to look at existing VistA M code as examples. If you want to see how another programmer set up the Fileman edit API (D ^DIE) then do a routine search of some routines for the string ^DIE.
In the VistA world, knowing M is good. But the power comes from understanding the VistA APIs, especially the Fileman APIs, and to understand global variable structures to store data (i.e., Fileman DD structure). Most of the Fileman APIs are easily set up on a single command line since you can have multiple commands on a single line. So starting at the programmer's prompt, do not worry about creating a routine. Just try setting up a Fileman API call from a programmer's prompt and then look at your results. ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is Sponsored by the Better Software Conference & EXPO September 19-22, 2005 * San Francisco, CA * Development Lifecycle Practices Agile & Plan-Driven Development * Managing Projects & Teams * Testing & QA Security * Process Improvement & Measurement * http://www.sqe.com/bsce5sf _______________________________________________ Hardhats-members mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
