[AccessD] Naming Conventions

>Eventually I stopped doing it mainly for the benefit of others who have to
maintain my code.

Yes, but if you could get a significant portion of people to use this
then....

Uhh... Never mind.

;-)

John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com 

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Brett Barabash
Sent: Saturday, August 14, 2004 12:11 PM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: RE: [AccessD] Naming Conventions


Jim,
Are you sure that Dijkstra actually condemned GOSUB statements? Practically
everyone in the computer science community knows about his groundbreaking
"GOTO statements considered harmful" paper, but I have never heard this
applied to GOSUBs.

In some older BASIC languages, a GOSUB statement was used in a similar
manner to CALL, in that it would execute a separate subroutine, and return
to the exact same point in the calling routine when complete. This concept
is directly in line with the tenets of structured programming, and IMHO a
vital tool for modularizing code into manageable blocks.  Contrast this with
the "evil" GOTO statement, which allowed one to jump mindlessly from
procedure to procedure, with no specific rule as to where code execution
resumed.  Spaghetti code, anyone?

Now here's the part of the message where I'll probably stir up a pointless
debate.  I have used GOSUB statements for years in my AccessBasic, VB and
VBA code, and only recently stopped doing so because the outdated syntax is
confusing to someone unfamiliar with its use.

I personally try to avoid global variables (another debate in itself), and
limit the use of modular variables.  In routines using several
procedure-level variables, breaking an unwieldy procedure into smaller ones
involves passing multiple arguments to the child routines.  A possible
alternative is to break code blocks into separate sections of the same
routine and call it with GoSub.  Not only do you have the benefit of sharing
all of your procedure level variables, but the code is kept bundled with
your main sub.

I found this approach to be elegant and useful.  Many people would pan it as
clunky, outdated, and even arcane.  Eventually I stopped doing it mainly for
the benefit of others who have to maintain my code.