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Date:	Sun, 15 Feb 2004 07:21:52 PST8
From:	"Lynn H. Maxson" <lmaxson@pacbell.net >
Reply-To:	scoug-programming@scoug.com
To:	< "scoug-programming@scoug.com" > scoug-programming@scoug.com >
Subject:	SCOUG-Programming: PL/I most important statement (was: call(TZ) ? - PL/I)

Content Type: text/plain

"...The BEGIN/END combination does a great job of bracketing
my series of calculations--and it ALSO handles memory
allocation."

This started to get wierd some responses ago. Pity the poor
guy who doesn't have a PL/I compiler and thus no possibility
of a begin-end segment. Of all the multitude of advantages
PL/I has over any other programming language this one never
occurred to me. Pity the poor guy that says this looks good
to him, writes it in C where he doesn't have a begin-end but
everything else, and fails to understand why it doesn't work.
In fact it won't even compile.

If this has made you a convert to PL/I, I should be happy. If
begin-end allows to feel like an engineer and not a
programmer, chalk up another one for PL/I. If a fortunate
coincidence, an unintended alignment of the planets, lets you
do something here that you can't do elsewhere, then by all
means use it.

Like Bob I am not here to dictate programming (or
engineering) style. I happen to believe that the intelligibility
of the code, if anything, is more important to the reader than
the writer...who at some later moment finds the roles
reversed. If it were important to allocate everything at the
beginning of a code segment and free it at the end, I still
have only one 'allocate' and 'free' statement necessary...with
a clarity for the non-PL/I-familiar reader not available on
encountering a begin-end sequence.

You do whatever makes you feel comfortable. I'm happy that
PL/I gives you that which you cannot find elsewhere. I regret
that this travel to nirvana has taken you this long to get
there. Now you know why Bob and I and others prefer PL/I to
other choices. Welcome aboard.

In your example...and in fact in Peter's...you have two
separate set of calculations. I'm curious, if it's important to
mark out in code the beginning and end of each calculation,
why didn't you use begin-end for both? Don't tell me it's
because you are an engineer and not a programmer.

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