OpenEuphoria

Re: Fair Criticism

• Posted by Graeme <graemeburke at hotmail.com> Aug 12, 2001
• 559 views

>You know very well that a Pascal program which has both a customer 
>structure
>and a product
>structure will never get confused when you refer to customer.name or
>product.name.
>And that you can go into the customer structure later and add a .phone 
>field
>without
>having to renumber all the following fields in that structure. In most 
>other
>languages
>this is a standard, in fact an  *expected*  feature. One which simplifies,
>not complicates,
>the language. One which reduces, not increases, errors.



At this point it seems to me that you're not really programming in EU. You 
are
thinking in another launguage and translating. Perhaps an OO style method of
referencing elements might make some people feel more comfortable ... even 
potential
new users. Could be a good thing, but it does NOT add any functionallity. It 
dosn't
DO anything apart from better suit some people's programming styles. If you 
declare
constants dynamically (for elements of a structure) then use them, why do 
you need
to renumber anything?



type string(sequence s)
    for x=1 to length(s) do
        if sequence(s[x]) then
            return 0
        end if
    end for
    return 1
end type


type record(sequence s)
    if not string(s[fFirstName]) then return 0 end if
    if not string(s[fLastName]) then return 0 end if
    if not string(s[fPhone]) then return 0 end if
    if not pos_int(s[fShoesize]) then return 0 end if
    -- ....  etc ..
    return 1
end type



integer  fEnum_count
fEnum_count=0

function fEnum()
    fEnum_count+=1
    return fEnum_count
end function


constant
         fFirstName      =fEnum(),
         fLastName       =fEnum(),
         fPhone          =fEnum(),

         --........ add as many as u like here

         fShoeSize       =fEnum(),
         NUM_FIELDS      =fEnum_count(),


.... i could go on but by now you should see where I'm coming from.

If you add or remove something, nothing needs to be renumbered,
it's all created dynamically and the actual order of fields is
irrellivant. i dont see that much diffrence between record.fFirstName
and record[fFirstName] The concept can be easily extended beyond this
quick example to include complex data structures. If I were doing a
customer structure and a product structure they would be seperate
objects in seperate include files, including the routines and controls
to access them.

Immediately I hear you say that this is confusing and error prone and
that you dont like the font color. To this I reply that every system is
more confusing and error prone than the one you're used to, and that
font color is just a matter of taste.

This is the system I use, often without even bothering with the type
statements, I'm used to it. I dont find it confusing. I find it VERY
easy to debug if I make a mistake, or to alter at a later date.

I think one point in favor of Rob adding dot notation or the like would
be that it might make EU more attractive or friendly looking to potential 
new users. I reject the concept that because EU is not like
Pascal it needs 'fixing'.

Graeme.