The finding that fewer explicit GOTOs are used and need be used in writing a routine in a statement-level language that makes the standard structured-programming figures available is at once trivial and important.
As I noted in an earlier post I tend to use GOTOs chiefly in recursive processing, which the structured-programming theorists have largely ignored. If and when they formalize and implement recursive figures that meet my needs, I will of course use them. Until then I will continue to use GOTOs, implemented as cleanly as I know how in at least locally standard ways. What I have found at once odd and a distressing is all of this late-in-the-day zealotry. I feel no lively sense of guilt when I use a GOTO, and I doubt that programming students shoulkd be taught to do so. GOTOs are and will be infrequent in well written code., but anathema are dubious here and elsewhere. They belong to another, prescientific tradition. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
