Debunking the 'Expensive Procedural Call' Myth or Procedure Call Implementations Considered Harmful or Lambda: The Ultimate GOTO.

Abstract

Folklore states that GOTO statements are cheap, while procedure calls are 'expensive'. This myth is largely a result of poorly designed language implementations. The historical growth of this myth is considered. Both theoretical ideas and an existing implementation are discussed which debunk this myth. It is shown that the unrestricted use of procedure calls permits great stylistic freedom. In particular, any flowchart can be written as a structured program without introducing extra variables. The difficulty with the GOTO statement and the procedure call is characterized as a conflict between abstract programming concepts and concrete language constructs. (Author)

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Oct 01, 1977
Accession Number
ADA062381

Entities

People

  • Guy Lewis Steele Jr.

Organizations

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Algorithms
  • Arithmetic
  • Automata
  • Computations
  • Computer Languages
  • Computer Programming
  • Computers
  • Language
  • Machine Languages
  • Machines
  • New York
  • Notation
  • Operating Systems
  • Programming Languages
  • Standards
  • Structured Programming

Readers

  • Computational Linguistics
  • Educational Psychology
  • Systems Analysis and Design