FW: Declare global in called table goes away following lookup?

[Fairlight]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 08:28:41PM -0400, after drawing runes in goat's blood,
John Esak cast forth these immortal, mystical words:
> 
> Huh... you are all only calling this an exception or arbitrary *after the
> fact*... there was a time when it was perfectly logical... and then, when
> declare global didn't even exist for filePro, the ,g standing for global
> made perfect sense. Still does.

He started it!  :)

I never said it needed to be re-referenced, that was his assertion.  I was
simply volunteering how I thought of it in an attempt to help.

> The ,g was not to represent a variable being persistent just across records
> but just as importantly across processing tables.  It was perfectly logical
> to use the term from other programming languages that conveyed this idea.

I guess with the 8yr break between 4.1 and 5.x when I wasn't writing fP
code, I forgot that it was also used cross-table.  I still think of it
mostly due to its cross-record properties, mostly because back when all we
had was 'g', I was using -one- table at a time--I only adopted CALL much
later.  I would either be in input or an output table, but not more than
one.  So for -my purposes-, it's always been a temporal-related boolean,
with the exception of the automatic table, which 1) I never use, and 2) has
been cited as problematic enough declaring things there and forgetting
about it that I just plain never use the automatic table for anything at
all, preferring to avoid it.  :)  And I never used sort/select, so all
things combined, the only thing it's ever meant to me -personally- is
really that cross-record temporal functionality.  It does more than that,
but that's the mental context in which I frame it.

> Not being able to remember/learn/understand the difference between ataching
> a ,g to a variable definition and a global to a declare would tell me that
> you are going to have other quite more serious problems in programming with
> filePro.

It was my take that he meant that if you talk about a variable being global
or not, without mentioning either 'g' or declare, someone might not know
which you mean.

The actual question -I- have is, does 'g' actually modify a declared global
in any way, or is it essentially a null argument?  To wit:
     
     declare global WhatsIt(20,*,g)

Is that any different if you omit the 'g', since it's declared globally?
By my way of looking at it, I figure yes--it should retain its value across
records if you include 'g', but in all other ways, it's equivalent to the
old global so long as you have matching externs.  But that's really only a
hypothesis.  When I want to be sure something sticks around between
records, I use 'g', period.  :)  But for all I know, the declare global
implies a 'g'.  So I'm asking for an authoritative answer.

> Mnmonics are fine when they are needed... I don't see the need here.

Me either, particularly.  But you already know I look at it very
differently due to how I use it.  :)

> Sounds like a dull day and we have nothing better to talk about.

I dunno...in the past 24hrs I've messed about with Bryce landscape
rendering, created album cover art, started drawing a stylised car, played
some World of Warcraft, responded on some product forums for some software
I've been on, watched two espisodes of SG: Atlantis, and managed to squeeze
in an argument, dinner with attendant wikipedia reading, and sleep.  And
I watched that video clip Brian put up the URL for with the convention
and rolled my eyes really hard at the guy that preceded him for the whole
social deconstructionism aspect to his response.

Overall, I've been busy enough.  Hell, I have more I want to do than I have
time in which to do it.  I haven't gotten back to my drum pad yet, but I'm
basically letting my arm finish recovering from last week's 8hr session.
I played last Saturday I think it was, and I still couldn't move my hand
without serious pain until about Wednesday.  Going 18yrs without playing
with sticks, then playing the equivalent of 4+ sets straight is...not
bright, actually. :)  Thankfully it's not my mouse hand that got screwed
up.

Back to either drawing or warcraft for me...

mark->
-- 
The latest synth mixdown...
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