Many C dialects do support long jumps as a language extension. They began in PL/I where they were/are called out-of-block GOTOs. PL/I's used of contextually recognized instead of reserved words is a high virtue. It is often caricatured as permitting constructs like
declare file file record sequential buffered ; which does indeed declare a file named file. Its real virtues are that it facilitates language growth without nasty side effects and makes language extensions, assuming the availability of a suitably powerful macro preprocessor, easy. The confusion of popularity with quality is misleading. There may even be an inverse relationship between language popularity and language quality, although unpopularity is not an attribute that should be sought after as such. 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
