Python and COBOL

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

On 01 Sep 2000 16:42:26 -0400, François Pinard <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca>
declaimed the following in comp.lang.python:

> 
> Even worse was "ALTER paragraph-1 TO PROCEED TO paragraph-2.", with the
> limitation that the first given paragraph should contain a single GOTO
> statement.  It had the effect of altering that GOTO statement at run-time,
> so it jumps elsewhere than what it textually looked in the source.  So, you
> might not even believe that a GOTO was being executed as written.  I once
> worked in a series of programs making a notable abuse of these things,
> and in my opinion, that system was both unreadable and unmaintainable.
>
	I believe ALTER has been deemed obsolete, and is to be removed
from the next COBOL standard.

	Of course, FORTRAN had the

		assign <label> to <var>

and
		goto <var>

statements to do similar games.


	And then, horror of horrors, there are the Object-Oriented
additions for COBOL! <G>

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