I respond with the GOTO perspective when it's cast in an absolutely negative light as in "My teacher failed us" or "Our Company will fire you if you use a GOTO" kind of limited thinking. I stand by my beer/alcoholic analogy.
And actually, I would like to see this break-on situation done without GOTO's. I've developed a routine that's nice and tidy for any number of break-on levels and I'd like to learn a different way. One can learn programming from a variety of sources: Academic, other peoples code and system-level examples (DM,BP,). I've not run into these GOTO-less environments everyone talks about in 25 years of perhaps 40 different application systems. And yes, I've certainly seen enought bad use of GOTO's to recognize its potential danger. But not in an absolute sense. Thanks. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ken Wallis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, June 17, 2004 9:32 PM Subject: RE: [U2] [UV] WHILE READNEXT id DO > Mark Johnson wrote: > > > This appears to be the semi-annual GOTO holy war. > > But only one side is fighting. > > Leave it alone Mark. Nothing good came of it last time, and nothing good > will come of it this time. Those who believe GOTOs have their uses will not > be convinced otherwise by a thread on a mailing list like this, and those of > us who avoid GOTOs completely will similarly not change their mindset for > you. > > > I would like for someone to offer me some code segments to perform the > > following MVquery statement as a true data/basic program: > > > > SORT CUSTOMER BY STATE BY CITY NAME BREAK-ON CITY BREAK-ON STATE TOTAL > > YTD-SALES > > > > I really would like to see how the other side programs this. > > Not that I intend to take this further Mark, but are you seriously trying to > imply that sorting, breakpointing and totalling cannot be done well without > using GOTO? > > Although I have trouble envisioning it, I'm confident that there is a coding > solution to this specific problem that makes use of GOTO, and I'm sure that > you have such a solution in mind. Great. If that makes you productive and > you clients happy, then I'm all for it. Just so long as I don't have to > consult at one of your client sites once you've retired. My mind simply > doesn't work that way. I tend to think about iteration before I look at > branches. That drives me towards nested LOOPs and all sorts of structures > in which GOTOs are, to my mind, both superfluous and dangerous. > > I don't want to get into this Holy War. Time was when I'd have taken up the > cudgel, but it doesn't achieve anything when you are more than an arm's > length away! I'd rather disagree without becoming disagreeable. Please > simply take it as read that any problem that can be solved in BASIC using a > GOTO, can also be solved without using it. Similarly, I assume that > anything I can code a solution to has at least one equivalent solution that > involves a GOTO statement. > > Cheers, > > Ken > ------- > u2-users mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > To unsubscribe please visit http://listserver.u2ug.org/ ------- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe please visit http://listserver.u2ug.org/
