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From: "Stephen Fuld" <SFuld@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Unicode in strings
Date: Sun, 26 May 2024 03:50:46 -0000 (UTC)
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John Savard wrote:

> On Sat, 18 May 2024 17:11:32 -0000 (UTC), "Stephen Fuld"
> <SFuld@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid> wrote:
> 
> > and
> > because it was supposedly "self documenting", easier for managers,
> > etc.  to see how the program worked.
> 
> Of course, if they designed COBOL that way, why did they include a
> statement that let you re-direct GOTO statements from elsewhere in a
> program?

That feature (Alter GOTO) was also in Fortran, as the, long since
deprecated, assigned GOTO statement.  I believe they were there to
support some older computers that didn't have indexed jump/branch
instructions, so achieved the effect by modifying the branch
destination in the instruction itself.  And yes, it wwas ugly and made
comprehension of the program, and also debugging it, much harder.


> I mean, that was just asking for dishonest programmers to direct the
> odd pennies into their bank accounts and so on.

Not really.  You had to Alter the goto statement to some pre-existing
label, not just anywhere in the code.



-- 
 - Stephen Fuld 
(e-mail address disguised to prevent spam)