"people were using" is not the same as "the language only has". There are far too many people who treat software as static, and only use what they learned initially.
I, OTOH, am OCD about what has changed in the software that I am using. It's amazing who many times someone tells me that, e.g., ISPF, can't do something that I have been using for ages. So I can fully believe, but not approve of, that there are people still using ALTER (if it still exists) in blissful igorance of better methods. Do I like COBOL? No, but that doesn't mean that bogus criticism of it won't raise my hackles. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [[email protected]] on behalf of Rupert Reynolds [[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, April 1, 2023 6:30 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: CASE constructs I seem to remember that most of the perceived weaknesses in COBOL were addressed a long time ago. But some old tales just won't die. Back when JSP meant Jackson Structured, I remember being told that PL/I supported selection directly with 'SELECT', while in COBOL people were using ALTER with GOTO (oof!). It may have been true, briefly, but it seems COBOL caught up in most respects reasonably quickly. Roops On Sat, 1 Apr 2023, 02:24 Frank Swarbrick, <[email protected]> wrote: > COBOL: > > EVALUATE A = 1 > WHEN TRUE [...] > WHEN FALSE [...] > END-EVALUATE > > (WHEN FALSE could be WHEN OTHER in this case.) > > Not many people would use this over IF ELSE, but it's available. > > There's also "EVALUATE TRUE" where each WHEN is a full evaluation, > eliminating any need for IF ELSE/IF ELSE/IF ELSE. > > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
