Re: ALTER, ASSIGN and labels-as-values

According to EricP  <ThatWouldBeTelling@thevillage.com>:

It would have a similar effect if it allowed
  i = 42
and then elsewhere it said "alter 42 to 17".

As others have noticed, many versions of Fortran let you do that due
to the way they implemented call by reference.  But that was always
considered a bug.

I can see company coding standards banning this feature,
not because it might be abused, but because even when used as
intended it would be a nightmare for code maintenance.

Exactly.  COBOL was remarkably casual about control flow, e.g.

A.  PERFORM C through E EXACTLY 2 TIMES.

B.  ...

C.  ...

D.  ...

E.  ...

F.  ...

The sequence would be A C D E C D E B C D E F

There was nothing in the code to tell you that C was the start of a
subprocedure or that E was its end.  "Don't do that."



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