'goto" gone from computer languages or is it!

Dave Dunfield dave04a at dunfield.com
Fri May 13 15:11:33 CDT 2005


At 12:42 13/05/2005 -0700, you wrote:
>Point taken; my first guess was 0 0 0, but it is apparently left
>ambiguous by the standards committee. I did use the term "almost
>always" to hedge, but still, you're right.
>
>Nevertheless, for any given compiler there is only one interpretation.
>So I hereby clarify my statement to say that programming languages as
>implemented by actual compilers or interpreters are the most succinct,
>clear and unambigious specification languages imaginable.

Now I disagree with you - if you rely on a particular implementations
handling of undefined behaviour, your abstraction is no longer clear
or unambiguous - in fact, quite the opposite...

The only correction to be made to your original statement, is that
the programming language must be used correctly - an idea that I
automatically assumed from the beginning, hence I originally had
nothing to add to it.


>To another poster's point about "overspecification," I guess that's
>true. So? That's what comments and thoughtful use of identifiers is
>for.

... and avoid undefined bahaviour ...


>Sorry my first couple of posts on the list are to OT threads. I'll try
>to do better in the future :-)

[I've seen worst OT go on a lot longer :-]
but yeah - this is getting to far away from where we should be - time to
go down to the basement and blink some lights!

Regards,
Dave
-- 
dave04a (at)    Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot)  Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com
com             Collector of vintage computing equipment:
                http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html




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