Yes, one key aspect of good 'structured' programming is how one chooses separate the functional programming blocks (routines) in any given application.
Gary H
-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Maine [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, 11 March 2004 3:14 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Data type "UNDEFINED"
On Mar 10, 2004, at 8:47 AM, Walt Brainerd wrote:
> Alvaro Fernandez wrote:
> (E.g. you
>> weren't supposed to jump out of a loop even using something like
>> EXIT, but
>> where forced to set a flag and check for that flag in the conditional
>> part
>> of the loop, complicating error checking.)
>
> I certainly don't agree with this advice and those who put the EXIT
> into
> Fortran 90 apparently didn't either. Following this would be carrying
> somebody's idea of "structured programming" into the realm of the
> silly.
I might add that this is exactly the kind of arbitrary rule that causes
some so-called "structured" programs to be fully as incomprehensible a
mess as the classic excessive use of goto in spaghetti code.
You can't write well-structured code just by sitting down with a list of
acceptable syntax forms any more than you can write good literature by
sitting down with a dictionary of good words. It is a serious misnomer
(but a common one) to equate the term "structured" with a particular
choice of syntax forms. The syntax forms can help express the structure
and can help your thought process, but the structure comes from the
programmer's thought processes, not from the syntax. None of these
observations are original to me; they are closer to accepted cliches.
--
Richard Maine | Good judgment comes from experience;
[log in to unmask] | experience comes from bad judgment.
| -- Mark Twain
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