RE: IMHO -- RPG400-L

In my Honest/Humble Opinion

Bradley V. Stone
BVS/Tools
http://www.bvstools.com



-----Original Message-----
From: Carol Bastien [mailto:cabastien@home.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 1999 9:18 AM
To: RPG400-L@midrange.com
Subject: Re: IMHO


Could someone please tell me what IMHO represents?  I'm beginning to feel
like I
entered a chat room!
- cb

James W. Kilgore wrote:

> John,
>
> I agree that the real world is a lot more complex than examples of
code/style
> technique.
>
> IMHO, a SELECT is a IF/GOTO in disguise where the branch point may be
pages
> away.
>
> In the school I went to we were taught usage of subroutines with a simple
rule:
> A routine (or section of mainline) either makes a decision or performs a
> function but never both.  OK, it wasn't really a rule, just a guideline.
>
> The addition of a row of dashes or whatever and comments can guide the
follow-up
> programmer to the fact that there is a transition from execution to
decision and
> back again.  It's a style decision.
>
> Now it's not a LAW, but it does help one to organize a process to minimize
> visual scan for logical function.  Personally I have yet to find a
situation
> where pages of SELECT can not be stated by a group of CASxx indicating the
> decision process and separate routines to execute the decision.  And that
> execution may be no more than another series of CASxx decisions.  It's a
style
> decision.
>
> If an IF is followed by more code than the eye can scan completely, it
should be
> a subroutine.  It's a style decision.
>
> This is really nothing more than another form of nesting by choice of
style.  I
> admit, ENDSR is just GOTO with a variable target.
>
> And if one is willing to admit that SELECT/ LEAVE/ ENDSR/DOx/IF are just
> elaborated GOTO's, GOTO or CABxx are no more than members of many
branching
> instructions to be used/abused by choice of style.
>
> Now if the programmers that chose the spaghetti road would please leave
the
> building ....... ;-)
>
> John Taylor wrote:
>
> > Chris,
> >
> > Thank you for the refresher in STRUCTURED PROGRAMMING 101. ;-)
> >
> > However, my intent was to point out that the GOTO is not inherently a
bad
> > thing. The working example is an extreme simplification of the
validation
> > routine. A single select is very clean in this case. In the real world,
the
> > validations will generally be more complex, involving multiple IF's and
> > possibly some more SELECTs. That leads to nested SELECT statements,
which I
> > try to avoid whenever possible because the fixed format tends to make it
a
> > chore determining where any given select ends.
> >
>
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