OpenEuphoria

RE: Declaring a Function Before it is used

• Posted by Phil Russell <pg_russell at lineone.net> Oct 30, 2003
• 473 views

I'm with Derek on this one.  The lack of forward referencing really 
starts to hurt when you are writing/maintaining large libraries (like 
EuGrid in my case). 

I don't see the value in an imposed 'philosophy' which just ends up 
wasting my time. 

I don't know much about the interpreter's innards but perhaps a 
compromise would be a new 'with forward references' declaration 
statement?  

If this were possible then those of us who don't mind a slight potential 
performance penalty could write code the way *we* want to.  The rest 
could carry on as at present.

Regards,

Phil

Derek Parnell wrote:
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Ricardo Forno" <rmforno at tutopia.com>
> To: <EUforum at topica.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2003 4:22 PM
> Subject: RE: Declaring a Function Before it is used
> > 
> > If your program really needs that, then it is not so simple. In fact, 
> > this
> > is necessary only when you have two (or more) mutually recursive 
> > functions.
> > Regards.
> 
> The other time it is 'necessary' is when the coder wishes to have the 
> source code structured in such a manner that it reflects the 
> architecture of the application. That's a fancy way of saying the I'd 
> like to have related routines physically close to each other in the 
> source code.
> 
> With the current restriction in Euphoria, I am frequently moving 
> routines around the source files so that they can used - this is one of 
> the reasns why Win32lib is such a dog's breakfast. For example, I 
> sometimes will change a routine so that it now calls another routine, 
> only to find that the routine I'm now calling is further down the in the 
> source file. So I must rearrange the code to accommodate RDS's 
> philosophy. And in doing so, I might suddenly find that I need to more 
> more than one (often unrelated) routine to get it 'just right'. In fact, 
> I've gotten so sick and tired of doing this that now I resort to 
> routine_id() calls instead of rearranging source code. Call me lazy, but 
> it is not effective coding practice (IMNSHO) to continually be concerned 
> with juggling the physical layout of source code.
> 
> The other language I deal with in a daily manner is Visual Basic, and 
> that language does not require either pre-declaration or restricted 
> physical code layouts. I can group my routines in a logical manner and 
> not worry about where in the source code a routine is physically coded 
> in order for me to use it.
> 
> RDS is got this one wrong.
> 
> -- 
> Derek
> 
>