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> but true spaghetti code that GOTOs all over the place and is nigh-impossible to follow has been extremely rare for a long time. Exactly! Recently I had the "

> but true spaghetti code that GOTOs all over the place and is nigh-impossible to follow has been extremely rare for a long time. Exactly! Recently I had the "pleasure" to work with some FORTRAN IV code from the early 60s, so I know what you mean. No functions/subroutines, only GOTOs. Even loops were done with labels. There is also a weird feature called "arithmetic IF statements" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_IF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_IF). Luckily the code was pretty short (about 500 lines including comments).

bee_rider 4y ago
Hmm, it is time to live Cunningham's Law I think: There’s no good way to do a do…while loop in Fortran, other than a goto.
- spacechild1 4y ago
  Early Fortran already had loops, but with labels: INTEGER A(4,4), C, R ... DO 10 WHILE ( C .NE. R ) A(C,R) = A(C,R) + 1 C = C+1 10 CONTINUE Note that Fortran has evolved significantly over time. This is how you would write the same in Fortran 77: INTEGER A(4,4), C, R ... C = 4 R = 1 DO WHILE ( C .GT. R ) A(C,R) = 1 C = C - 1 END DO
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    Those are just regular loops, though, right? I’m looking for the posttest loop, sometimes known as the do…while or until loop. There seems to be a unfortunate inconsistency in the naming of this thing.
    - spacechild1 4y ago
      Ah, right, I misread your post. DO WHILE is indeed a "normal" while loop. There doesn't seem to be an equivalent to "do { ... } while", as found in most C-style languages. > There seems to be a unfortunate inconsistency in the naming of this thing. Well, Fortran is older than C, so you cannot really blame them :-)
      - bee_rider 4y ago
        The funny thing is, I mostly program in Fortran (thus the interest in this construct). It is nice for expressing “this iterative method must be run at least once.” Unfortunately at some point I absorbed the name that comes from the C-ism, haha.
        spacechild1 4y ago
        May I ask what field you're working in? Physics?
        int_19h 4y ago
        A less ambiguous name for those is repeat/until, as seen in Pascal and its descendants - I don't recall any language that uses that syntax for anything other than a postcondition loop.

bee_rider 4y ago

Hmm, it is time to live Cunningham's Law I think: There’s no good way to do a do…while loop in Fortran, other than a goto.

spacechild1 4y ago
Early Fortran already had loops, but with labels: INTEGER A(4,4), C, R ... DO 10 WHILE ( C .NE. R ) A(C,R) = A(C,R) + 1 C = C+1 10 CONTINUE Note that Fortran has evolved significantly over time. This is how you would write the same in Fortran 77: INTEGER A(4,4), C, R ... C = 4 R = 1 DO WHILE ( C .GT. R ) A(C,R) = 1 C = C - 1 END DO
- bee_rider 4y ago
  Those are just regular loops, though, right? I’m looking for the posttest loop, sometimes known as the do…while or until loop. There seems to be a unfortunate inconsistency in the naming of this thing.
  - spacechild1 4y ago
    Ah, right, I misread your post. DO WHILE is indeed a "normal" while loop. There doesn't seem to be an equivalent to "do { ... } while", as found in most C-style languages. > There seems to be a unfortunate inconsistency in the naming of this thing. Well, Fortran is older than C, so you cannot really blame them :-)
    - bee_rider 4y ago
      The funny thing is, I mostly program in Fortran (thus the interest in this construct). It is nice for expressing “this iterative method must be run at least once.” Unfortunately at some point I absorbed the name that comes from the C-ism, haha.
      - spacechild1 4y ago
        May I ask what field you're working in? Physics?
      - int_19h 4y ago
        A less ambiguous name for those is repeat/until, as seen in Pascal and its descendants - I don't recall any language that uses that syntax for anything other than a postcondition loop.