At 09:47 PM 2/28/98 -0500, you wrote:
>John Alleyn-Day replies (Thanks!) thusly:
>
>>If the program is in a loop the debug file should repeat ad nauseam - I
>>presume you edited out one repeat - if not, I would want to know why it
>>didn't.
>
>Nope.  What you see is what I get.  The debug file just stops there, while
>the program hangs.  I also would like to know what the program is doing,
>since it's not looping (at least in the traditional sense).
>
>>Add a statement to save the value of COND-WORD to the debug file so you
>can
>>see it increasing and whether it ever gets to 100.
>
>That's what the "begin open" and "end open" pass numbers are.  It never
>advances beyond zero.  In fact, the paragraph appears to be executed
>once and then the program hangs.
>
You need to move spaces to debug-record and cond-word to display-number
before you string "END ATTEMPT .......".  You are not seeing the most
recent value of cond-word (and "string" doesn't clear the record the way
"move" does).

>>Add statements to output the value of JOB-CTL-STATUS at approriate places.
>
>Hmmmmm.  Haven't thought of this.  I really don't care why the file
>couldn't
>be opened or locked (do I?), it's probably locked by someone else.

job-ctl-status is being used to give you a return from the "open" and also
(presumably) from the "exclusive".  Also the logic of the "perform" depends
on its value, so you have to know what it is after every time it could change.

Do you have debug statements elswhere in your program, so that that you can
pinpoint where it gets to?

I'm presuming that the initial 8 lines are somewhere else in the program,
since there is nowhere for the code to go after executing them, except to
run on on into the "OPEN" paragraph.  I can't see that something like that
would have the effect you describe, however.

By the way, what is the problem with using an unconditional lock and just
waiting for the file to unlock?  Do you have some rogue process that holds
a lock for an inordinate amount of time?

John D. Alleyn-Day
Alleyn-Day International
408-286-6421   408-286-6474 (Fax)
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"The man that never made a mistake never made anything"