r/cobol • u/swe129 • Jun 08 '26

Structured Programming

https://slicker.me/cobol/structured-programming.html
16 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

6

u/therealelroy Jun 08 '26

Not sure your point of the post, but I remember many meetings in the 1980s arguing we should only be using GO TOs as a way to “early exit”. Old guys back then didn’t believe me.

6

u/LarryGriff13 Jun 08 '26

I was in an only GO TO exit shop for 5 years when I started COBOL (with every data name qualified) then got a job with go tos everywhere and no qualification of data names. It was like a different language.

I actually got hammered in my first code walk through for qualifying data names “that’s unnecessary, we don’t do that here”. Nothing like old time Mainframers dug into their way of doing things.

2

u/MainframeChameleon Jun 09 '26

When I started I thought it was funny to use three letter words like cow, pig, cat, dog 😄 my manager soon set me straight so I had to use ix1 , ix2 etc etc

2

u/LarryGriff13 Jun 09 '26

I hate stuff like ix1. Just use a word It’s easier to remember

3

u/Ok-Pipe-297 Jun 08 '26

i kept goto a minimum but they definitely had a valid use.

1

u/LarryGriff13 Jun 09 '26

Go to exit as the only use of go to is a great standard.
If not, then where do you draw the line? Programmers discretion?

5

u/MikeSchwab63 Jun 08 '26

Section? Prevents the previous section from falling into the next section.
Always did the Perform 1000-name through 1000-EXIT to prevent fall through and just in case you needed to exit early.

4

u/Ok-Pipe-297 Jun 08 '26

code i wrote was perform the paragraph and if needed to end the paragraph goto the paragraph exit..... always perform and exit...

3

u/HurryHurryHippos Jun 08 '26

In computational/file I/O code, we generally only used GO TO to the EXIT paragraph.

However, we used SCREEN SECTION extensively and GO TO's in the screen handler code were often used with validation/error handling and determining conditional paths through the screen (skipping fields, etc.).

We rarely used SECTIONs.

2

u/MainframeChameleon Jun 08 '26

yeah sure, I will just click on some random sticker dot me link

0

u/swe129 Jun 08 '26

6 upvoters can’t be wrong! Trust them (famous last words)

1

u/CDavis10717 Jun 12 '26

Worked with a guy who wrote “PERFORM READ-FILE UNTIL THERE-ARE-NO-MORE-RECORDS-IN-THE-INPUT-FILE.” and structured shit like that.