I think that there are [at least] two usefully separated issues here.

I looked yesterday at a macro definition I wrote 16 years ago that I
still use but had not updated in the interval.  As a part of its
bullet-proofing it conditionally removes some framing single quotes
from input values in the old, long-winded way instead of using the
HLASM's comparatively new DEQUOTE bif.  I fixed it to use DEQUOTE in
three places,  and that was appropriate, but it would be unreasonable
to expect IBM to undertake to  retrofit all of its macros to use
DEQUOTE wherever it could be used to advantage.

I come now to Tony Harminc's example:

<begin extract>
But SETRP generates a NOPR with an expression (related to the SDWA, I think)
obviously intended (and I think commented) to fail if the length is
not 0. However HLASM doesn't think the expression is a likely register
value - a legal one, certainly - but still worth a warning if you have
registers EQUated with the GR or GR32 or GR64 option.
</end extract>

It is very different.  Register equates are ubiquitous.  What we thus
have in this example is no or inadequate testing, and that is not
defensible.  None of us expects IBM code to be error-free.  None of us
writes such code.   We do expect that IBM code will have been tested,
in effect that such errors as we find in it will be subtle and not
crudely obvious ones; and in this expectation we are now often
disappointed.


John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA

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