Of course alphabetic is very inefficient. In the Unioted States more thsan half of the business in many insurance lines is in "CA', 'NY', and 'TX'. Programmers keep such sets of if-then-elses in lexicographic sequence to simplify their maintenance. Moreover, they often continue to do so even after they have been shown with hard numbers thay they should not.
One of the good things about the branch table is that, for now at least, putting it and its maintenance into assembly language converts it into a black box. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
