I don't know enough COBOL to contribute much more on that score. But I can
now recall some of the COBOL programmer's words, "ALTER GOTO is the only
sensible support for structured programming" which sounds like an eccentric
view, if not actually mad :-)
He was clearly good at his job, though, and
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: CASE constructs
I seem to remember that most of the perceived weaknesses in COBOL were
addressed a long time ago.
But some old tales just won't die. Back when JSP meant Jackson Structured,
I remember being told that PL/I supported selection directly wi
On Sat, 1 Apr 2023 11:30:24 +0100, Rupert Reynolds wrote:
>...
>while in COBOL people were using ALTER with GOTO (oof!).
>
???
But didn't they need a CASE/SELECT to choose which ALTER?
--
gil
--
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / sign
I seem to remember that most of the perceived weaknesses in COBOL were
addressed a long time ago.
But some old tales just won't die. Back when JSP meant Jackson Structured,
I remember being told that PL/I supported selection directly with 'SELECT',
while in COBOL people were using ALTER with GOTO
COBOL:
EVALUATE A = 1
WHEN TRUE [...]
WHEN FALSE [...]
END-EVALUATE
(WHEN FALSE could be WHEN OTHER in this case.)
Not many people would use this over IF ELSE, but it's available.
There's also "EVALUATE TRUE" where each WHEN is a full evaluation, eliminating
any need for IF ELSE/IF ELSE/IF ELS
