I had two reactions to Peter Relson's post. The first was one of complete agreement. I can think of few drearier or more gratuitous tasks than "going through all of the manuals" to change instances of 'load module' to instances of 'load module or program object'.
I can imagine that as text is revised---for other, substantive reasons---appropriate collaterial changes in text that refers to 'load modules' could be made, but that is a very different matter. The second is a little different. In my view at least program objects are still too little used. There are circumstances, much discussed here, in which they cannot be used and perhaps never will be usable; but they are few. What seems to be forgotten much too often is that the design and implementation of programs objects were a response to the deficiencies, many of them radical, of load modules. We have just had a discussion of the fact that the magic number 255 is more problematic with load-module libraries than it is with program-object ones, and other such discussions are frequent here. For this reason it seems to me better to labor the distinctions between load modules and program object, PDSs and PDSEs, than it is to assume implicitly that they are much of a muchness, interchangeable in use. This community is full of instinctually risk averse, conservative people who cherish and defend the old and are reluctant to master new technology, often long after it has ceased to be at all new. This propensity is stubborn and hard to change, but it should be discouraged where it can be, and terminology that obliterates substantive distinctions is not helpful in doing so. Portmanteau words like 'alphanumeric' are often useful. Its availability saves writing out the phrase 'alphabetic or numeric' repeatedly. Like Paul Gilmartin, I have sometimes found myself lamenting the absence of a briefer locution for 'load module or program object'; in this case, however, I suspect that making one available would be counter-productive. 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
