Timeline for Why did BASIC use line numbers?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
5 events
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| Feb 26, 2016 at 23:39 | comment | added | dan04 |
Some BASICs (e.g., Atari's) even allowed arbitrary numeric expressions to be used in GOTO statements. So, with a proper line numbering convention, you could write GOTO 1000+N*100 to emulate a switch statement.
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| Feb 12, 2016 at 12:28 | comment | added | dave_thompson_085 |
Minor: FORTRAN required labels for targets of GOTO (or ASSIGN) and the original aka arithmetic aka threeway IF, and (rarely used) alternate returns in CALL, and sort-of-targets (arguably delimiters) of DO, and FORMAT statements. On other statements they were optional.
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| Feb 11, 2016 at 21:34 | comment | added | Stack Exchange Broke The Law |
GCC allows computed GOTOs as an extension (although not with a line number directly of course) - you can do stuff like goto array_of_labels[some_computation()];
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| Feb 11, 2016 at 10:31 | comment | added | Kickstart | Ah, computed and assigned gotos. Memories of arrays of label variables in PL/1, looping through one array to find a match and then using that matches array index as the index in the array of label variables to do a goto to. Or Cobol altered gotos. And neither using line numbers! BBC basic had a renumber statement that was very useful. | |
| Feb 10, 2016 at 15:08 | history | answered | Mike Harris | CC BY-SA 3.0 |