NewBie's Corner Session 13 .MAC and .INT Routines and Comment Lines

NewBie's Corner Session 13 .MAC and .INT Routines and Comment Lines

Welcome to NewBie's Corner, a weekly or biweekly post covering basic Caché Material.

.MAC and .INT versions of Routine

Save Routines with a .MAC Extension

When saving your routines, be sure to specify a .MAC file extension (the default) and not a .INT extension.  The .INT version of a routine is an intermediate version of the routine. It is in the .INT version of a routine that the SQL Code (and other code) from the .MAC version is expanded upon.  I know the VA (Veterans Administration) routinely uses .INT extensions and they get away with it because they know how to do it. But I strongly suggest any NewBie use a .MAC file extension, which is the default.

I know others may disagree with me, well their entitled.

Comment Lines

The best-written code is seldom self-evident as to its intended purpose. Therefore, clearly stated, concise comments are necessary.

One would think that comment lines are straight forward, and they are, well, not always.

I will not go into all the ins and outs of comments (see the InterSystems documentation), but for this post say, anything that follows a semi-colon is a comment (and the semi-colon is not in column 1).

For example

PROC     ; comments may follow a label

               ;

               ; Everything that follows the ";" is a comment

               ;

               Set X=1                                              ; comments may follow code

--Mike Kadow

PaulMikeKadow@gmail.com

If you have a comment, please respond through the InterSystems Developer Community, don't send me private email, unless of course you wish to address me only.

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