The branch execution logic in modern (s/360 or newer. YES s/360 circa 1963) are among the most efficient in the processor. That still has not changed. Forget anyone ever told you that GO TO increases CPU overhead.
<snip> ...... GO TO was made a pariah by an article by Edgar Dijkstra. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Considered_harmful And, of course, management went stupid (again) and came up with "you cannot use the GOTO in any code at all!!!!". Which actually makes some COBOL more complicated due to the requirement of nesting IF statements within IF statements. </snip> Just as in many other things, a good idea can be taken to an illogical extreme or out of context. In addition to avoiding GO TO's, Dykstra also proposed limiting each "module" to "1 page or less of code", that being the upper limit of what could be "proven" to be correct code. ( I'll bet management forgot about that one!). BTW, I agree w/Dykstra. Maintaining a structured program is far easier than spaghetti code. However, one page of code is a very small routine and will result in excessive overhead due to all of the module calls. (BTDTGTTS). I haven't re-read Dykstra in many years, but I believe that he may have left some loopholes. All of that being said, sometimes a plain old "GO TO" is far easier to decipher that if/then/else nested ad nauseum. As with most things in this business, it depends! Just my $0.02 (USD) worth. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
