Re: "If %scan(x:y)" is not valid???

Dan wrote:
> ...
> > Summary:
> > It checks to see if the order is valid.
> 
> Maybe.  Are you sure?  Remember, you don't know the programmer who wrote it.
> ...

So you check it once, and see that indeed it does that, and then you
don't have to check it again (at least during this particular
maintenance session).  While you're checking, you probably have a look
at a few more of the subprocedures coded near ValidOrder, to see if they
also do what the names suggest.  You gradually learn which procedures do
what they say they do, and you gradually start saving time re-reading
code.  In debug, with unfamiliar procedures you step in once to see
what's going on, then step over unless you spot something suspicious
inside it.

If the procedure doesn't do what its name suggests, shouldn't you do
something about it?  Change the name, fix the code, whatever.  Just
because you have a bad procedure now doesn't mean you have to have one
in the future.  Fixing it so the procedure is re-inlined everywhere it's
called doesn't seem like a good solution to me.

I think you implied that it's ok to have procedures with many lines of
code, but do these longer procedures have different criteria for correct
naming and for only doing what they say they are doing?  Seems to me the
number of lines is completely irrelevant to the question of how you
handle a procedure-call line while doing maintenance.