I found this in the ICETOOL doc: | Continuation can be indicated by a hyphen (-) after the operator or after any operand. The next operand must then be specified on the next line. For example: | SORT FROM(INDD) - | USING(ABCD) - | TO(OUTPUT1,OUTPUT2,OUTPUT3) | | Any characters specified after the hyphen are ignored.
Which shows me that line comments are a byproduct of the ICETOOL continuation logic, and not a core feature. From your earlier example, I thought that the # character had some significance, but now I see that it does not. None of the examples in the doc show line comments being used. I use the traditional "* in column 1" comment to show "Here is what is coming up in the next several lines of code", usually with a blank line in front, so that the eye can scan to each block of statements quickly. I use line comments to explain the gory details of the code immediately to the left of it. This is the style I learned as an Assembler programmer, and it carries forward to my work in many other languages. DFSORT and ICETOOL code can be very complex, and is daunting for a new student, looking at it for the first time. While teaching, we seek to have a stream of "Aha, I get what it is doing!" moments. Line comments help us to explain those gory details that lead to the "Light Bulb" moment. The best thing about the DFSORT documentation is that there are numerous examples of different scenarios, with the code to handle that scenario. Other IBM products would do well to follow this approach. Regards, Bob Stark ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
