Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!rutgers!sri-spam!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!ncoast.UUCP!btb From: btb@ncoast.UUCP.UUCP Newsgroups: mod.computers.vax Subject: Vax/VMS Modular Programming standard Message-ID: <543711055.15104@ncoast> Date: Wed, 25-Mar-87 22:39:07 EST Article-I.D.: ncoast.543711055.15104 Posted: Wed Mar 25 22:39:07 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 28-Mar-87 07:04:51 EST Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: Brad Banko Distribution: world Organization: Cleveland Public Access UN*X, Cleveland, OH Lines: 34 Approved: info-vax@sri-kl.arpa Summary: signal handling, procedure design I have some questions related to the Vax/VMS Modular Programming standard. I am NOT a systems programmer, but nonetheless am involved in implementing a program library which we hope will adhere to the Vax/VMS Modular Programming standard as defined in the doc: Guide to Modular Procedures (or something like that) I am particularly interested in what the standard means as related to a facility/library's internal procedures... the Guide makes a somewhat unclear reference to 'being consistent' about having library modules return signal status codes and/or (or exclusive or?) signal exceptions... I can understand the logic of this from the point of view that it unifies the user's interface to the library, but what about procedures internal to the facility/library? There are many little support routines that I need to write to do stuff to our data structures which would be internal (i.e., not called by a user of the library) and many of these little routines would be more elegantly programmed as functions returning some value other than a signal, etc. I have grown to understand the logic of the naming conventions for facility procedures, constants, signals, etc., but I can't see the extension of the logic of returning status codes from user modules to internal modules which often won't need to return any status/signal information (the only possible errors in them would be fortran (that's the language we are using) errors)... I would appreciate any and all comments. Thanks. -- Brad Banko Cleveland, Ohio ...!decvax!cwruecmp!ncoast!btb "The only thing we have to fear on this planet is man." -- Carl Jung, 1875-1961