Some things improved when the future of COBOL was wrested from Codasyl, and some did not. We still have the proliferation of distinctions among entities that ought not to be distinguished, distinctions without substantive differences.
The three entities pointer procedure-pointer program-pointer are the poster children for this dubious practice. I know what the differences among tgherm are, but if pointer had not been misconceived in the beginning they would have been unnecessary. (There is no better case for associating ancillary information with a pointer than there is for associating it with a signed fullword.) John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
