IF-THEN-ELSE considered harmful

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IF-THEN-ELSE considered harmful

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ACM SIGPLAN Notices archive
Volume 10 , Issue 8 (August 1975) table of contents

Pages: 34 - 44

Year of Publication: 1975

ISSN:0362-1340

Authors

Gerald M. Weinberg	State University of New York, Binghamton, New York
Dennis P. Geller	State University of New York, Binghamton, New York
Thomas W. S. Plum	State University of New York, Binghamton, New York

Publisher

ACM New York, NY, USA

Bibliometrics

Downloads (6 Weeks): n/a, Downloads (12 Months): n/a, Citation Count: 11

Additional Information:

abstract references cited by collaborative colleagues

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ABSTRACT

Although the if-then-else construct for flow of control is simple in some senses, and certainly superior to unrestricted GO TO logic, the indefinite replication of this structure leads to undesireable program constructs. Other, more extensible control structures may be added to programming languages, while regulating the unrestricted use of if-then-else, in such a way as to reduce the complexity of programs.

REFERENCES

Note: OCR errors may be found in this Reference List extracted from the full text article. ACM has opted to expose the complete List rather than only correct and linked references.

	1	Miller, George A., "The Magical Number Seven, Plus-or-minus Two: Some Limits on our Capacity for Processing Information", <u>Psychological Review</u>, 63, No. 2, March 1956
	2	Wason, P. C. and P. N. Johnson-Laird, <u>Psychology of Reasoning: Structure and Content</u>, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U. Press, 1972
	3	Edsger W. Dijkstra, Letters to the editor: go to statement considered harmful, Communications of the ACM, v.11 n.3, p.147-148, March 1968 [doi>10.1145/362929.362947]
	4	Weinberg, G. M., M. Goetz, S. Wright, and R. Kaufmann, <u>High Level COBOL Programming</u>, in press
	5	Plum, Thomas W-S., "Fooling the User of a Programming Language", submitted to 1975 Conference on Reliable Software
	6	Weinberg, G. M., Dennis P. Geller, and Thomas W-S. Plum, "DO WHILE Considered Harmful", in preparation
	7	Weinberg, G. M., <u>PL/I Programming: A Manual of Style</u>, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970

CITED BY 11

	Bryan Ratcliff, ALGOL 68 and structured programming for learner-programmers, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, v.12 n.6, p.157-160, June 1977
	John Beidler, A place for assembler in structured programming, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, v.9 n.1, p.108-112, Feb 1977
	Neta Amit, A different solution for improving the readability of deeply nested IF-THEN-ELSE control structure, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, v.19 n.1, p.24-30, January 1984
	Janusz W. Laski, On readability of programs with loops, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, v.14 n.11, November 1979
	Nobuyoshi Terashima, The hierarchical language system, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, v.12 n.9, p.103-113, September 1977
	J. Vanthienen, A note on English for decision tables considered harmful and the nested IF-THEN-ELSE, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, v.20 n.5, May 1985
	Leonard H. Weiner, The roots of structured programming, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, v.10 n.1, February 1978
	P. S. Newman, IF-THEN-ELSE, again, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, v.18 n.12, December 1983
	J. D. Gannon, Characteristic errors in programming languages, Proceedings of the 1978 annual conference, p.570-575, January 1978
	Frederic Richard , Henry F. Ledgard, A reminder for language designers, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, v.12 n.12, p.73-82, December 1977
	E. H. den Hertog , H J. C. Gerbscheid , M. L. Kersten, DO-SELECT reconsidered, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, v.18 n.3, March 1983

Collaborative Colleagues:

Gerald M. Weinberg: colleagues

Dennis P. Geller: colleagues

Thomas W. S. Plum: colleagues

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