hokey@plus5.uucp (The Moderator) (05/06/85)
std-mumps Digest Mon, 6 May 85 Volume 1 : Issue 15 Today's Topics: JOB and Routine Structure comments ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 6 May 85 13:41:44 CDT (Mon) From: hokey Subject: JOB and Routine Structure comments To: plus5.uucp!std-mumps While the jobactuallist is a (L expr) and therefore implicitly call-by-value, I would like to see an explicit statement to this effect. Also, the proposed paragraph 3 in section 3.2.2 is not really precise in view of the proposed changes to JOB. Specifically, the sentence which reads "These variables are not available to other processes." Further, how about adding "...which limit *and alter* the availablilty..." in the sentence which follows the one noted earlier? In the Routine Structure proposal, I would prefer to use an explicit symbol to initiate execution of an inner block: D[O] postcond L doargument doargument::= $ postcond entryref postcond labelref actuallist postcond @ expratom V L doargument Note that this permits the execution of the inner block to be controlled by a postcond. This scheme has the added benefit of making it easy to pass parameters to the inner block, if that capability is so desired. It also opens the way to the possibility of "extrinsic blocks", which would provide a tremendously powerful means of implementing control structures like REPEAT/UNTIL, DO/WHILE, CONTINUE, BREAK, and several combinations not available in other languages. The use of $ also has a convienient mnemonic tie with extrinsics, and "fits" with the heirarchical nature of Mumps. Bob Isch: In your latest block structure proposal you limit the scope of the statement to a single line. I understand this is good because it limits the search to the same line for the closing symbol, but is the capability really useful in such a constrained environment? ------------------------------ End of std-mumps Digest ******************************