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DanRRight · Posted: Fri Sep 01, 2017 2:28 am Post subject: Debugger improvements

SDBG has nice feature showing variable value in tiny popup screen when you point on variable with the mouse. Would be great to add the same feature when you point on ENDIFs and ENDDOs. Something like here (on this static image shown all popups at the same time but of course only one will be seen in reality)

That will help us not to be lost in the spaghetti codes

PaulLaidler · Posted: Fri Sep 01, 2017 7:55 am Post subject:

I would often write this as !comment in the code.
Also, don't forget that constructs can be named in Fortran 90.

DanRRight · Posted: Fri Sep 01, 2017 9:40 am Post subject:

I also do comment enddos and endifs. But I started doing this just recently after hundreds of thousands of lines of codes when the mess became unbearable Sad

. Because nobody teaches good coding practices so my $10 bet is that most people don't do that. And naming is way too rarely used, and is known and much less used only by very advanced coders.

LitusSaxonicum · Posted: Fri Sep 01, 2017 3:35 pm Post subject:

Dan,

When I was programming in Algol-60, back in the 1960s, the use of indenting was essential, and I spent many hours drawing links between the start of a loop and its end using different coloured pens. Can I help by sending you a set, along with a long ruler, down to the South Pole? Can you still get your source codes printed on music-ruled fan-fold paper on a line printer?

At least with traditional Fortran DO loops one automatically gets a connection between the DO statement and the final CONTINUE statement through the statement number of the latter, which in fixed-format source codes is an 'outdent'. It slowly dawned on me that what I had seen as a primitive defect was actually a helpful construct.

But sadly, the past is a foreign country where they do things differently (or so said H. E. Bates in 'The Go Between'). Don't believe people who say the past (or indeed, the primitive) was always worse!

Eddie

DanRRight · Posted: Fri Sep 01, 2017 11:29 pm Post subject:

Eddie, oh yeah, the indentation is simply a must, I completely forgotten mentioning it, because it is so natural that you don't even notice it. You are dead without it in large codes. As to coloring - here is where I don't have opinion. I tried to convince my editor developer 20 years ago to implement coloring because almost all do that but he refused... I think Plato also has it but I use batch files to compile instead. As a result I have no clue if it actually helps or distracts. What is your opinion?

JohnCampbell · Joined: 16 Feb 2006 Posts: 2585 Location: Sydney

Hi Dan,

Plato does have colouring, although the colours don't contrast a lot. I'm sure I could change the colour palette.

To keep track of nested or long DO loops I have always suggested using the DO variable as an alternate DO label, but few have given that support. The alternative I often use is END DO ! DO_variable, eg

LitusSaxonicum · Posted: Sat Sep 02, 2017 1:56 pm Post subject:

John,

It is intriguing that the content of your do loop is one step further indented than the start and finish. Wouldn't:

mecej4 · Joined: 31 Oct 2006 Posts: 1896

LitusSaxonicum · Posted: Sat Sep 02, 2017 11:19 pm Post subject:

Mecej4,

It doesn't work for me. I prefer no indent at all, blank lines, CONTINUE and statement numbers. It's the 'the way nature intended' as I see it (quote misused from the Silverfrost top page) ;-).

If I had to use indents, then I'm sure that I would find having the content indented differently obfuscated the connection between the beginning, content, and end.

But then I don't indent loops, not since ALGOL days, and they ended, abruptly, in 1970 ! My recollection was that they were indented rather like John's layout, but the interior code began with "BEGIN" and ended with "END" which made it a sort of logical block.

Eddie

LitusSaxonicum · Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2017 3:16 pm Post subject:

I wouldn't indent, but then I'd have statement numbers. They are an 'outdent', akin to a tab on the left. Then it's obvious where the loop ends.

The need for wider layouts is due to longer names and indents. Neither are essential.

Just saying.

Eddie

DanRRight · Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2017 6:43 pm Post subject:

DanRRight · Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2017 7:06 pm Post subject:

Since all codes on Earth are full of devilry, this separator is also recommended for Main GUI

DanRRight · Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2017 7:33 pm Post subject:

Other examples

DanRRight · Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2017 4:12 am Post subject:

ASCII sources are boring. With such beautifications you will start a bit loving them.

When compilers will accept normal human oriented editors, like WORD and PowerPoint for Windows with their DOC, DOCX etc files? There we can add graphics and tables for documenting, clarification and just for beautifications. Silverfrost/Salford, how about you, remember your glorious days of being first to offer something new!

But let's return to our poor sheeps, I still like to see very very much that SDBG to show the matching if/else/endif and do/enddo. Just right now I again was stopped with some my own bugs and again losing hell of time, swearing, hell angry at myself, trying to add indentations and separators, to finally find the ends of numerous if/endifs in my own code written 30 years ago as a spaghetti code.

JohnCampbell · Joined: 16 Feb 2006 Posts: 2585 Location: Sydney

Dan,

You have to eliminate the bugs !!

Bugs are "coding errors" not "devilry"

Throw out the Ouija board and give /IM a go.

You then have to develop a table of all variables being used. It provides a way of looking at the code in a slightly different way and could help identify where some coding errors may be.

John