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std-mumps Digest            Mon,  6 May 85       Volume  1 : Issue  15

Today's Topics:
                  JOB and Routine Structure comments
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Date: 6 May 85 13:41:44 CDT (Mon)
From: hokey
Subject: JOB and Routine Structure comments
To: plus5.uucp!std-mumps

While the jobactuallist is a (L expr) and therefore implicitly
call-by-value, I would like to see an explicit statement to
this effect.

Also, the proposed paragraph 3 in section 3.2.2 is not really precise
in view of the proposed changes to JOB.  Specifically, the sentence which
reads "These variables are not available to other processes."  Further,
how about adding "...which limit *and alter* the availablilty..." in
the sentence which follows the one noted earlier?

In the Routine Structure proposal, I would prefer to use an explicit
symbol to initiate execution of an inner block:

	D[O] postcond L doargument

	doargument::=	$ postcond
			entryref postcond
			labelref actuallist postcond
			@ expratom V L doargument

Note that this permits the execution of the inner block to be controlled
by a postcond.

This scheme has the added benefit of making it easy to pass parameters to
the inner block, if that capability is so desired.  It also opens the way
to the possibility of "extrinsic blocks", which would provide a tremendously
powerful means of implementing control structures like REPEAT/UNTIL,
DO/WHILE, CONTINUE, BREAK, and several combinations not available in
other languages.

The use of $ also has a convienient mnemonic tie with extrinsics, and "fits"
with the heirarchical nature of Mumps.


Bob Isch:

In your latest block structure proposal you limit the scope of the statement
to a single line.  I understand this is good because it limits the search
to the same line for the closing symbol, but is the capability really
useful in such a constrained environment?

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End of std-mumps Digest
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