OpenEuphoria

2. Re: Open Source

• Posted by Al Getz <Xaxo at aol.com> Sep 25, 2006
• 666 views

Bruce M. Axtens wrote:
> 
> Has anyone mentioned Creative Commons? Sorry, I haven't been lurking 
> as regularly as I might wish.
> 
> I must confess, I'm not totally convinced by the need to go open source. 
> Check out <<a
> href="http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=235278">http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=235278</a>>
> where
> Bill Hilf discusses Microsoft's changed attitude to FOSS and why Office 
> will never be open source.
> 
> Kind regards,
> Bruce M. Axtens,
> Internal Engineer,
> Strapper Technologies.

Hi there Bruce,

That video was a bit too long for me (60mins) so perhaps
someone can sum up 'why' MS wont go open with Office.

Thanks...


Take care,
Al

E boa sorte com sua programacao Euphoria!


My bumper sticker: "I brake for LED's"

 From "Black Knight":
"I can live with losing the good fight,
 but i can not live without fighting it".
"Well on second thought, maybe not."

4. Re: Open Source

• Posted by Pete Lomax <petelomax at blueyonder.co.uk> Sep 26, 2006
• 682 views

On Mon, 25 Sep 2006 13:13:24 -0700, Chris Bensler
<guest at RapidEuphoria.com> wrote:

>I've had a look at them and I think they are quite good.
>>http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/licensingbasics/sharedsourcelicenses.mspx

Surprisingly short and snappy. The cynic in me wonders if this is a
ruse, ie non-enforcable - it would be interesting to know whether any
of these have actually been upheld in court...

The succinctness of Ms_RL is interesting, in the way it bothers not to
list any stuff you cannot do. [Ms_RL itself is quite prohibitively
restrictive, internal and M$ only; the wording is crystal though.]
Really not what I would have expected from M$ at all.

Regards,
Pete

6. Open Source

• Posted by don cole <doncole at ?acbell.?et> Oct 19, 2007
• 648 views

Now that Euphoria open source. (The answer to everything.) How come we now
  can't have a Goto?

Don Cole

8. Re: Open Source

• Posted by ChrisBurch2 <crylex at fre?u?.co.uk> Oct 19, 2007
• 646 views

don cole wrote:
> 
>   Now that Euphoria open source. (The answer to everything.) How come we now
> can't have a Goto?
> 
> Don Cole


Ah, that's the beuty of open source. If you want a goto, YOU have a goto. You 
just have to make it yourself, and then make the source available for everyone
to decide if they want it. But you've still got one.

Chris

10. Re: Open Source

• Posted by Juergen Luethje <j.lue at gmx??e> Oct 19, 2007
• 659 views

Matt Lewis wrote:

> Juergen Luethje wrote:
> > 
> > don cole wrote:
> > 
> > >   Now that Euphoria open source. (The answer to everything.) How come 
> > > we now can't have a Goto?
> > 
> > We could also ask:
> > "Now that everyone can use tools for calculating like (s)he wants,
> > how come that nobody uses a slide rule?".
> > The answer to both your and my question is the same: It's obsolete,
> > nowadays there are better tools for the regarding purpose.
> 
> Someone should tell this luser:
> 
> <a
> href="http://lkml.org/lkml/2003/1/12/128">http://lkml.org/lkml/2003/1/12/128</a>
> 
> :P

Quote from that post:
"I think goto's are fine, and they are often more readable than large
amounts of indentation."

That's the same like saying: "At night it's colder than outside."
Fortunately, Linus had written some other stuff, which is considerably
better. 

Regards,
   Juergen

12. Re: Open Source

• Posted by Matt Lewis <matthewwalkerlewis at gmail??om> Oct 19, 2007
• 643 views

Juergen Luethje wrote:
> 
> Matt Lewis wrote:
> 
> Quote from that post:
> "I think goto's are fine, and they are often more readable than large
> amounts of indentation."
> 
> That's the same like saying: "At night it's colder than outside."
> Fortunately, Linus had written some other stuff, which is considerably
> better. 

I don't follow your saying.  It's actually a very interesting thread.
Here are two of the better posts advocating gotos:

http://lkml.org/lkml/2003/1/12/134
http://lkml.org/lkml/2003/1/12/252

Note:  This post isn't actively advocating for gotos in euphoria--though
I think there's a place for them, especially in the form of something
like a "continue" statement.  It's also amusing [to me] to note that
much of the speed of euphoria is due to gotos.

Matt

14. Re: Open Source

• Posted by jacques deschênes <desja at glob?trotter.net> Oct 19, 2007
• 646 views

Juergen Luethje wrote:
> 
> don cole wrote:
> 
> >   Now that Euphoria open source. (The answer to everything.) How come we now
> > can't have a Goto?
> 
> We could also ask:
> "Now that everyone can use tools for calculating like (s)he wants,
> how come that nobody uses a slide rule?".
> The answer to both your and my question is the same: It's obsolete,
> nowadays there are better tools for the regarding purpose.
> 
> Regards,
>    Juergen

Don't make it a religion.  "Goto" is not the devil.  By the way in assembler
there is only "goto"
conditional ones like those that jump to a label if some flag is set or unset
and unconditionnal jump.  Even at call to subroutine is a goto preceded by som
push an registry saving.

There is a place for "goto", with or whitout "goto" a good coder stay a good
coder and a bad one, a bad one.


Jacques D.

16. Re: Open Source

• Posted by Matt Lewis <matthewwalkerlewis at gma?l.co?> Oct 19, 2007
• 669 views

Juergen Luethje wrote:
> 
> I do not make it a religion. Please do not put words into my mouth.
> I just say that it's obsolete in high-level languages. This is of
> course only true if a language provides sufficient other possibilities.
> For instance in Euphoria, it would be useful not only to have an 'exit'
> statement, but also the possibility to write something like
> 
>    exit <number of levels>

I've often thought this, too, although that construct worries me.  What
happens if the levels change?  Even if they don't change, it's not trivial 
to figure out the target of that exit.  A label-based exit, OTOH, can be 
very useful, and explicit.

For example, perl allows you to name a block (which could be a while/for/etc)
and to use the next/last operators along with the block name:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl_control_structures

A euphorian implementation might look like:

:mainloop for i = 1 to n do
    ...
    :jloop for j = 1 to m do
        ....
        if foo then 
            exit :mainloop 
        end if
        while foo > 5 do
            ...
            if bar then
               exit :jloop
            end if
            ...
    end for
end for

That keeps the labels firmly associated with their proper loops.  It 
makes the goal very clear, although at the expense of clarity of where
you're going:

for i = 1 to n do
    ...
    for j = 1 to m do
        ....
        if foo then 
            goto :mainloop 
        end if
        while foo > 5 do
            ...
            if bar then
               goto :jloop
            end if
            ...
    end for
    :jloop
end for
:mainloop

I can see benefits to both ways, though I think I would prefer keeping 
them associated with the loop.  It's also how exits work right now.

Matt

18. Re: Open Source

• Posted by jacques deschênes <desja at glo?etr?tter.net> Oct 19, 2007
• 653 views

Al Getz wrote:
> 
> jacques deschênes wrote:
> > 
> > Don't make it a religion.  "Goto" is not the devil.  By the way in assembler
> > there is only "goto" 
> > conditional ones like those that jump to a label if some flag is set or
> > unset
> > and unconditionnal jump.  Even at call to subroutine is a goto preceded by
> > som
> > push an registry saving.
> > 
> > There is a place for "goto", with or whitout "goto" a good coder stay a good
> > coder and a bad one, a bad one.
> > 
> > 
> > Jacques D.
> 
> Hi there,
> 
> 
> The Curse of the Goto
> 
> 
> I have to disagree here.  A bad 'coder' stays a bad coder with the continued
> use of gotos, but he/she gets better without the use of the goto.
> 
> I used to think that gotos should not be used by beginning programmers
> until they have done a significant body of code, and then they will have
> the experience to realize the benefits and pitfalls.  I might be changing
> my stand on this however, because who can say that at the end of the
> day when they run into a big structuring problem, that they dont stick
> in a goto somewhere where it really shouldnt be?  "I'll get back to
> restructure that section of code at a later date, soon".  Then another
> goto, then another, then another.  It's too tempting sometimes to 
> stick in a goto rather than restructure a whole section of code.
> Restructure might take hours, a goto maybe 10 seconds...who here can
> fight that urge each and *every* single time this comes up?
> If you have the discipline to use gotos only inside a loop or within
> a short body of code alone where the readability actually gets better,
> then good for you.  Many wont be able to do this when faced with a tough
> dilemma that gets solved in a flash with a single (and ill placed)
> goto.  Sometimes the fastest way home is not the safest.
> 
> If this doesnt convince or at least show the main reasoning behind
> the pitfalls of the goto, then i will shut up and allow you to take on
> the Curse of the Goto for as long as you like.  Use gotos as freely
> (or not) as you like, but when the Curse of the Goto rears up and bites
> you on the backside, dont come back and claim that nobody warned you.
> 
> 
> Al
> 
> E boa sorte com sua programacao Euphoria!
> 
> 
> My bumper sticker: "I brake for LED's"
> 

Since 1974 I have programmed in many languages including assemblers and rarely
feeled the need for a goto (execpt in asm).
In euphoria the only times I feel the need for it is because of the lack of
error handling like there is is Java,C# or delphi.
What I'm saying is that under the hood every thing is a goto as this is the only
thing that exist at cpu level and that I'm agains any dogma.

If I had to choose between a "goto" or a "try-fail-finally" error handling
machanism like there is in Delphi I would choose the last one.

regards,
Jacques Deschênes

20. Re: Open Source

• Posted by Juergen Luethje <j.lue at g?x.d?> Oct 20, 2007
• 674 views
• Last edited Oct 21, 2007

Matt Lewis wrote:

> Juergen Luethje wrote:
> > 
> > Matt Lewis wrote:
> > 
> > Quote from that post:
> > "I think goto's are fine, and they are often more readable than large
> > amounts of indentation."
> > 
> > That's the same like saying: "At night it's colder than outside."
> > Fortunately, Linus had written some other stuff, which is considerably
> > better. 
> 
> I don't follow your saying.  It's actually a very interesting thread.

Sorry, I hadn't read the whole thread, but only the one post that you
had mentioned.

> Here are two of the better posts advocating gotos:
> 
> http://lkml.org/lkml/2003/1/12/134

In this post #134, the author writes:
|
| *judicious* use of goto can prevent code that is so cluttered with stuff [...]
|
I often have read something like that from people who are advocating "goto".
That might be correct -- but after my experience, reality very often is
different.

When people say so, that reminds me of a funny situation here in Germany.
We have a newspaper here, the content of which is on a level similar to the
British "The Sun" -- not exactly the stuff you need to read when you are
preparing your doctoral thesis. 
When you ask people in Germany, you'll come to the conclusion that all people
agree that this newspaper is "trash", and that nobody does read it. The funny
thing only is, that more than 3 million copies of it are sold daily ...

This is somewhat similar to my experience with "goto". People who are advocating
"goto" say it should be used "judicious", and they themselves of course are
doing
so. But when I look "in the wild", then I see something different. I know what
I'm talking about, after having read literally Megabytes of PowerBASIC (which
has
a "goto" statement) source codeby many different authors. So althought there
may be some rare situations when "goto" might be of some use (I never
encountered
such a situation, and I never needed to use "goto" with PowerBASIC.), according
to my experience, in the overwhelming majority "goto" is used to produce
spaghetti
code, which is hard to read an to maintain. Of course it's also possible to
write
bad readable and bad maintainable code *witout* "goto" (as I have learned from
the
archieves, this is even possible with Euphoria), but "goto" makes this job *a
lot*
easier. 

In the same post above, it reads:
|
| The real problem is that C doesn't have a good multi-level "break" construct.
|

I can't actually say much about C, but the author seems to share my opinion:
That "goto" is not necessary, when a language has good "modern" possibilities
for controlling the program flow.

Then it reads:
| On the other hand, I don't know of any language that has a good one - some
| allow "break 3;" to break 3 levels- but that's still bad because you get
| screwed if somebody adds an 'if' clause....

Why will we get screwed if somebody adds an if clause? I don't understand
that. Anyway, if "break n" oder "exit n" is not sufficient, then we should
think about even more advanced statements, rather then using "goto", which
simply has a bad use/risk ratio.

> http://lkml.org/lkml/2003/1/12/252
> 
> Note:  This post isn't actively advocating for gotos in euphoria--

I'm aware of that.

> though
> I think there's a place for them, especially in the form of something
> like a "continue" statement.

I'd actually appreciate a "continue" statement (which jumps from anywhere
inside a loop to its beginning), too. Please note that this is not what I
mean when I talk about "goto".
With "goto" I mean a statement that allows to jump to (almost) every point
in the code -- like "jmp" in assembler.

> It's also amusing [to me] to note that
> much of the speed of euphoria is due to gotos.

I think it is in the C source code of the interpreter/translator, no?
Don asked about "goto" *in Euphoria code*.
I use conditional and unconditional jumps myself, when I do ASM programming.
But I only use ASM code for small pieces of code, where speed is important.
And I only write ASM programs, when I have slept very well the night before. 
I do not expect ASM code to be good readable or easily maintainable.

That's the difference to a higher-level language like Euphoria. In my opinion,
"goto" is obsolete *in such higher-level languages* -- not in lower-level
languages such as C or ASM.
Code in higher-level languages should be easy to read and maintain, they
should allow the coder to concentrate on the problem he wants to solve.
The language itself should be part of the soöution, not part of the problem. 

Regards,
   Juergen

-- 
I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.
[Mark Twain]

22. Re: Open Source

• Posted by Jason Gade <jaygade at ?ah?o.com> Oct 20, 2007
• 666 views
• Last edited Oct 21, 2007

don cole wrote:
> 
> I didn't know it was going to be this much of a problem.
> 
> Let's just forget Goto.
> 
> Don Cole

Don't give up so easily -- it's been a contentious issue for as long as I can
remember. At least as contentious, if not more so, than the way that include
files and global variables should be handled.

BTW, well-written post above, Juergen.

I also kind of liked Jacques' post above regarding exception-handling
mechanisms. There should be a simple, Euphorian way to do that. I just don't know
what it is right now.

One suggestion: change the existing "exit" statement to optionally allow a label
and to work in both loops and if statements. You get 99% of the functionality of
the goto.

I also like the idea of "continue <label>" or "next <label>" where label is an
optional identifier at the beginning of a loop. But I haven't given it too much
thought.

As for handling tail-recursion? I have no idea.

--
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple
system that works.
--John Gall's 15th law of Systemantics.

"Premature optimization is the root of all evil in programming."
--C.A.R. Hoare

j.

24. Re: Open Source

• Posted by CChris <christian.cuvier at a?ric?lture.gouv.fr> Oct 22, 2007
• 672 views

Andy Drummond wrote:
> 
> Jason Gade wrote:
> > 
> > I also like the idea of "continue <label>" or "next <label>" where label
> > is an optional identifier at the beginning of a loop. But I haven't given it
> > too
> > much thought.
> > 
> 
> I would like to suggest three additions to the syntax of Euphoria which would
> get around 99% of the desire for a goto. Nothing new but as suggested above:
> 
>    next var    -- Go to the iteration point of the for loop for this variable
>    exit var    -- Ditto but exit the loop
>    redo var    -- Ditto but re-run the loop without iterating the variable
> 
> For nested loops the interpreter would have to release variables which were
> out of scope, but that is simple enough. If you have three nested loops
> using I, J & K, say, and in the middle had "next I", then that would be coded
> as exit K; exit J; next I;
> 
> }}}
<eucode>
>    for i=1 to 10 do
>       for j=1 to 10 do
>          for k=1 to 10 do
>             if some condition met then
>                next i
> -- effectively: exit k
> --              exit j
> --              next i
>             end if
>          end for
>       end for
>    end for
> </eucode>
{{{

> 
> These three would make the nested loop control much easier to code and much
> easier to read. And the desire for goto would almost vanish. Most people who
> ask for goto statements want them for exiting nested loops, it seems to me.
> 
> Any suggestions? Anyone able to add these to the interpreter?
> 
> Andy Drummond

Your approach only works for for-loops, not for while-loops.
However, I can add the loop variable as an extra possible argument to
exit/next/retry which work in my modified interpreter - see my reply to the first
post from Don Cole-. Only the front end needs be modified:
* next and retry translate to ELSE adequate_target
* Patch[E|X]List() handles delayed block exits, otherwise do business as usual.
Hiding the loop var is done at end of for loop, unchanged.

The other constructs I parse are:
* exit 1 (exit loop above), 2 (two loops above), ... -1 (all loops), -2 (all
loops but the topmost),... exit 0 is the same as exit.
* exit some_string, where the loop has been labelled with some_string.
* The way I add labels is as follows:
for i=1 to n [by 2] [label "my string"] do
if <some_condition> label "my block" then

I have no qualms changing "retry" to "redo". "continue" seems a little ambiguous
to me, which is why I prefer "next" over it, but it's not much of an issue. I
also have an "exif" statement which exits (nested) if blocks, same syntax
enhancements.

CChris

26. Re: Open Source

• Posted by don cole <doncole at ?acbe?l.net> Oct 23, 2007
• 631 views

I haven't used basic for so long. I don't know what I used goto for.

But for Euphoria I would think you need new command exitAllGoto.
for repeated gotos inside the loop use gosub or in our case 
procedure or function.

logical progression
--step [1]--
--step [2]--
 loop a
   loop b
     loop c
       condition met exitAllGoto step[4]
--step [3]--
--step [4]--

Don Cole