Re: ALTER, ASSIGN and labels-as-values (was: Unicode in strings)

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Sun, 26 May 2024 18:27:32 -0000 (UTC), Stephen Fuld wrote:
 

It has been over 40 years since I wrote any COBOL programs,
and when I was taught it, we were taught to avoid the ALTER
statement ...

 
People tend to scream in horror “self-modifying code!”. But really,
all it is, is a clumsy form of switch/case-statement.

Except, As John Levine pointed out, while with the case/switch
statement "where to go" is explicitly based on the current value of
some variable named in the statement, and assigning a value to that
variable is usually pretty close to the case/switch statement, with
Alter/Assign GOTO where to go is determoned by code scattered around
the program, and often not just before in time, the value is used.  So
while they may be semantically equivalent, in practice, there was a big
difference in ease of user comprehension and debugging of the program.



--
 - Stephen Fuld
(e-mail address disguised to prevent spam)