To: Frank Winans
Frank wrote:
dictate what language constructs you could use? I figure if they want THAT
much control, they're welcome to write the stupid program themselves.

g.


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LOOP WHILE READNEXT ID DO THE.LIST := SPACE(1):ENQUOTE(ID) REPEAT


On Oct 20, 10:49*am, "Ed Sheehan" <NOedsS... (AT) xmission (DOT) com> wrote:

On Oct 21, 4:06*am, "Frank Winans" <fwin... (AT) sbcglobal (DOT) net> wrote:
Holy Moses for a second or two I thought that I totally agreed with
TG :-)
Then I spotted it. One of the cardinal sins of programming in my
opinion.
The reliance on 0 and 1 giving true and false results without a proper
test for equality.
Ignoring the fact that Turing chose zero as true these tests are
totally unreliable across platforms.
D3 regards any non zero as true and one can waste a lot of time
looking for strange results when.code is moved to another platform
My call would be
ID = ""
THE.LIST = ""
LOOP
READNEXT ID ELSE ID = @AM
WHILE ID NE @AM DO
THE.LIST := \ "\:ID:\"\
REPEAT
As for truncating the code. I have nothing against careful use of
GOTO or even RETURN TO but putting multiple statements on a line saves
nothing and makes it harder to read or debug.
Peter McMurray

On 2011-10-23 19:03:46 -0400, Excalibur21 <pgmcmurray (AT) gmail (DOT) com> said:

I'm sure this intent of this thread wasn't code critique, but I'm
taking a little break. So....

I prefer positive over negative conditionals. So I always try to avoid
testing that something is NE to a value. And I certainly wouldn't be
using a system delimiter as the value for my test. I admit it's
perfectly valid, but seems a little weird to me.

Personally, I would minimize variables, conditionals, and indentation
by just exiting the loop

THE.LIST = ''
LOOP
READNEXT ID ELSE EXIT
THE.LIST := \ "\:ID:\"\
REPEAT

--
Kevin Powick

Excalibur21 wrote:
That code is found in an article dedicated to a feature of D3.
It works on the platform for which it was written.

*sigh*

I often wonder where this market would be if people discussed real
features, modern development tools and techniques, and market concerns
for new sales, with the same fervor as some of these trivial
syntactical nuances.

T

Rarely do I come across a thread with which I disagree on so many
counts!

Firstly, Frank W suggests using a GOTO/label, and why? Who uses GOTO
nowadays? How about this 3 liner if Tony's code offends (which works
cross platform):
LOOP
READNEXT ID THEN .... ELSE EXIT
REPEAT
or if your compiler supports it:
LOOP READNEXT ID THEN .... ELSE EXIT ; REPEAT

Second, that QM chose to implement an unnecessary READLIST syntax
shows that desginers don't use prior experience; Ultimate, Sequoia
(maybe D3) et al allow(ed) you to just use a Select variable as a
dynamic array (why they are internally different is the mystery), uv
does not. So the entire loop is unnecessary

SELECT TO THE.LIST ; * not needed of course if you Selected or Get-
List-ed to THE.LIST in the first place!
IF THE.LIST # '' THEN THE.LIST = '"':CONVERT(@AM,\""\,THE.LIST):'""

and Martin: Convert's twice as fast as CHANGE, at least on uv.

Third: >Ignoring the fact that Turing chose zero as true these test...

Yes, and maybe we should use the Babbage Engine for our computing
needs, I hear they're building a wooden one in England.... if there is
any Pick-y platform that does not treat 0 as false and 1 as true,
please cite (and I'll avoid it); it's built into the language. Even
javascript, that much-maligned language, treats non-zero as true and
0, false,null and undefined as false.

Kevin >And I certainly wouldn't be using a system delimiter as the
value for my test. I admit it's perfectly valid, but seems a little
weird to me.

It's actually the *best* value to use, since (in this particular case
using @AM), there's *no possibility* of a conflict and that's the
point. However, I say that in a loop-whatever-repeat case, setting a
variable at all instead of Exiting seems a little weird to me!

Rarely do I come across a thread with which I disagree on so many
counts!

Firstly, Frank W suggests using a GOTO/label, and why? Who uses GOTO
nowadays? How about this 3 liner if Tony's code offends (which works
cross platform):
LOOP
READNEXT ID THEN .... ELSE EXIT
REPEAT
or if your compiler supports it:
LOOP READNEXT ID THEN .... ELSE EXIT ; REPEAT

Second, that QM chose to implement an unnecessary READLIST syntax
shows that desginers don't use prior experience; Ultimate, Sequoia
(maybe D3) et al allow(ed) you to just use a Select variable as a
dynamic array (why they are internally different is the mystery), uv
does not. So the entire loop is unnecessary

SELECT TO THE.LIST ; * not needed of course if you Selected or Get-
List-ed to THE.LIST in the first place!
IF THE.LIST # '' THEN THE.LIST = '"':CONVERT(@AM,\""\,THE.LIST):'""

and Martin: Convert's twice as fast as CHANGE, at least on uv.

Third: >Ignoring the fact that Turing chose zero as true these test...

Yes, and maybe we should use the Babbage Engine for our computing
needs, I hear they're building a wooden one in England.... if there is
any Pick-y platform that does not treat 0 as false and 1 as true,
please cite (and I'll avoid it); it's built into the language. Even
javascript, that much-maligned language, treats non-zero as true and
0, false,null and undefined as false.

Kevin >And I certainly wouldn't be using a system delimiter as the
value for my test. I admit it's perfectly valid, but seems a little
weird to me.

It's actually the *best* value to use, since (in this particular case
using @AM), there's *no possibility* of a conflict and that's the
point. However, I say that in a loop-whatever-repeat case, setting a
variable at all instead of Exiting seems a little weird to me!

On 11/12/2011 09:16 AM, chandru murthi wrote:
It's always good to see you weigh in Chandru! Thanks for posting.
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+1

sdavmor wrote:
>It's always good to see you weigh in Chandru! Thanks for posting.