  Proper Status Code Processing? 
 The Question is:
 
Hello,
 
We are planning to migrate our software from DEC BASIC 1.0 to DEC BASIC 1.4.
 Our software's name is COBISS - Cooperative Online Bibliographic System and
 Services and it runs on more than 50 ALPHA servers (OpenVMS V6.2  to V7.3) in
 Slovenia.
 
Our question is if any problems with that migration could occur?
 
We have specially in mind Release Notes for DEC BASIC V1.2: "Improper VMSSTATUS
 value returned". In our software we use VMSSTATUS function a lot. For example:
 
when error in
  get #1
use
  sts = VMSSTATUS
end when
if sts = RMS$_EOF
....
 
Do we have to change our code (e.g. usage of BAS$_RMSEOF instead of RMS$_EOF),
 or is it enough if we just recompile the existing code with DEC BASIC 1.4?
 
Thanks a lot,
 
Lidija Curk
Software Development - COBISS2
Institute of Information Science
Presernova 17
2000 Maribor
Slovenia
 
 
 
 The Answer is :
 
  Migrating from a compiler version as old as that reported here to a more
  current version does have the potential to encounter (usually quite minor)
  problems.  Newer compilers are better at detecting and reporting latent
  errors within the application code, for instance.
 
  As of this writing, the current BASIC compiler version is V1.5.
 
  As for the specific question, the problem with VMSSTATUS was fixed long
  ago.  This construct works correctly in the current (V1.5) compiler
  version, and also works correctly in various other recent versions.
 
 Answer written or last revised on  4-NOV-2002 
