Re: Is it always possible to write a COBOL program using only 1 sentence per paragraph?

<docdwarf@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:db0m0u$c4l$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> In article <db0l7v$dec$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
> Chuck Stevens <charles.stevens@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Given that Mr Wong is a moderate neophyte and concluded from his research
> that 'based on the discussions I've found on the web, it looks like NEXT
> SENTENCE is an unconditional jump to the statement immediately following
> the period of the sentence containing the NEXT SENTENCE statement' it
> seems that he managed sidestep this 'common belief'... but perhaps those
> who post to this group are, by definition, rather uncommon.

Writing language tools (e.g. parsers, compilers, etc.) means I had to
read whatever language reference and documentations much more carefully than
I might otherwise have done if I were merely interested in learning how to
program in said language. For example, I felt I was a relatively
knowlegeable Java programmer, but it was't until I wrote Java compilation
tools that I had heard about the strict_fp modifier, or that you could
declare functions in the form "public int foo()[][][] { /*body of
function*/ }".

And it is certainly possible that if you use this newsgroup as a sample
space to perform some surveys on COBOL programmers, your results may
certainly be skewed.

- Oliver


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