Re: MI as the MI language of the as400.

From: <jamesl@hb.quik.com>
-0500 "Leif Svalgaard" wrote:
> > no, it is worse. A
> case statement continues after
> > the statement (unless to "goto" somewhere
> inside
> > it), but the GO TO DEPENDING don't come back.
> . . .
>
> As I said,
> it's a PRIMITIVE form. If the "coming back" (or more precisely,
> "coming back
> together") is coded manually, it effectively provides a CASE
> construct where
> the language itself doesn't support it.

It shows that you only took one year of Cobol :-)
The BIG difference is that a *single* GO TO destroys the
'structure' of your program. Consider:

PERFORM AAA
PERFORM BBB
PERFORM CCC
PERFORM BBB
STOP RUN
...
AAA.
...
    GO TO BBB.
...
BBB.
    ADD 1 TO NNN.
...
CCC.
   ADD 2 TO NNN.
...

because of the GO TO BBB, BBB will "fall thru" to
CCC when done. If you PERFORMed BBB it would
not. Inside of BBB you cannot go back to where you
came from because BBB cannot know which PERFORM
called it (you can, of course, cheat by inserting MOVE 1
TO RTN before the first PERFORM BBB and a MOVE 2
TO RTN before the second PERFORM BBB, but you are
digging yourself deeper in...). What COBOL needs is
a "CAME FROM" statement  :-).