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

John Savard wrote:

On Mon, 27 May 2024 22:40:32 -0000 (UTC), "Stephen Fuld"
<SFuld@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid> wrote:
 

John Savard wrote:

 

I find this to be an example of incredibly irresponsible language
design.

 

Was it irresponsible in Fortran?

 
I don't understand that question. FORTRAN contained no such language
construct.
 
It had the computed GOTO and the assigned GOTO.

The assigned GOTO was obviously what I was referring to.

snip

Now, there was also the assigned GOTO, and in a way one could
say that it was "closer" to what COBOL had.
 
The assigned GOTO was:
 
 GOTO LABEL,(1035,1045,1065)
 
and somewhere else you would say something like
 
 ASSIGN 1045 TO LABEL
 
Although this performed the same functionality as the ALTER
GOTO statement in COBOL was intended for, an assigned GOTO
still obviously had multiple different destinations, based on what
was assigned to the variable LABEL somewhere else.
 
What was irresponsible about ALTER GOTO was that if such a
thing existed in FORTRAN, one would have
 
 GOTO 12
 
and
 
 ALTER GOTO 12 TO 23
 
somewhere else. Now that would give no indication of its
presence, and it would thus be wholly confusing.

As I said before, you could easily scan the source code and find all
the ALTER statements and create a list of the potential targets similar
to the list in parentheses in Fortrans equivalent functionality. So
your objection is that the possible targets are not listed in one place?



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