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Placement of variable declarations in CPlacement of variable declarations in CPosted Oct 28, 2007 2:16 UTC (Sun) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)In reply to: Placement of variable declarations in C by RobSeace Parent article: A potential competitor for GCC: pcc
Structured programming isn't algorithmic programming that avoids excessive gotos. It's a different form of programming, and it doesn't have a goto concept at all. Ideally, one would use a structured programming language for structured programming, but when forced to use C, one can use a paradigm that makes a structured meta-language out of it. For example, never use a goto statement. You can look at a C program written in the structured paradigm as algorithmic and see looping and branching (obviously a compiler does), but since it wasn't written to be read that way, it won't be as easy to understand. Structured programming has a for structure. It was named before C existed, and C's 'for' statement is meant to allude to it, though it is not the same as a structured for statement, e.g. in Pascal. The fact that the value of the index variable is predictable outside of the for statement is one way to tell the difference. Besides algorithmic (branching and looping) and structured programming, there are various other forms of programming that don't have branches. LISP, Forth, and SAS are examples.
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Placement of variable declarations in C Posted Oct 28, 2007 11:28 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] I don't know what your definition of `branching' is, but it's not anything I'm familiar with. In order to describe any version of Lisp as `not having branches' one would have to define the two branches of `if' as `not branches', and similarly for `cond'. If an exception throw/catch isn't a `branch', I don't know what is.
Placement of variable declarations in C Posted Oct 28, 2007 14:26 UTC (Sun) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link] Yeah, what nix said... I think you're just playing semantic games, here... Just because you don't want to call something a "branch" or a "loop", doesn't mean it doesn't fit the definition of what I (and most other programmers I've encountered) use those words to mean... Perhaps they mean something radically different in your world, I don't know... Got a link to any supporting documentation on your alternate meanings?? And, BTW, I happen to hold a degree in CS, so I'm fairly familiar with the various forms of programming (though, it has been many years now), as well as languages such as LISP (which is functional programming, BTW, and DOES have what *I* would call both loops and branches)... I just never encountered anyone who had your strange notions about structured programming, and the supposed complete absense of "loops" and "branches", before... *shrug*
Placement of variable declarations in C Posted Oct 28, 2007 19:04 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] Well, it's more accurate to say that Lisp *can* be functional. You have to avoid most forms of `set'/`setf', though, and it's sort of tricky compared to the mixed functional/declarative approach generally adopted.
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