On Dec 27, 2007, at 4:29 PM, Tom Marchant wrote:
On Thu, 27 Dec 2007 15:02:07 -0600, McKown, John wrote:
-----Original Message-----
What about error messages to be issued when the program terminates
abnormally? IMO, when a program encounters an error condition that
prevents it from continuing, a good programmer will produce a
nice descriptive
message. How do _you_ think that it should be written?
--
Tom Marchant
I generally prefer a DISPLAY ... UPON CONSOLE for critical error
messages instead of UPON SYSOUT. Why? I think that they are more
likely
to be noticed.
I disagree. Even as an application programmer in the early '70s,
we considered
the console to be too busy to add that kind of traffic, except in
the rare case
that it required operator intervention. When the job is being
examined after
an abend, I prefer to be able to find a descriptive message in
SYSOUT rather
than have to search for the documentation for the program.
Tom,
We finally agree on something. One of the many standards we
implemented at a company I worked for was that a program could *NOT*
use display upon console for *ANYTHING*. The traffic on the console
was to great for any operator to notice anything from a program. Or a
request from a program to get input from an operator. Perhaps in the
1400 era that was permissible but in a multiprogramming environment
it is ridiculous to expect an operator to reply to a program there
could be over 100+ programs running at any given instant and the
operator is too busy to care what program is asking for.
When MVS first came out 2.0 there were in fact many D23 abends
(commtask) and any program that had a WTOR outstanding took the abend.
Nowdays it is less common for a D23 but the concept is the same NO
WTOR's. Any program that does is cancelled and a ticket written up on
it.
Just ask any poor operator and I think you will get the same response.
Ed
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