Use LOOPs to avoid excessive RETURNs

[Pete]

Just another in my huge line of tech tips to share with the growing Phoenix community. If you enjoy this coding tip, please feel free to use the code by donating to my GOFORKME page.

Okay, so have you ever used a GOSUB routine that goes on forever, but under several conditions needs to be exited early? If so, maybe you just added several RETURN statements after said conditions. That can get messy in a hurry, and it might be hard to debug when you are searching RETURN and trying to figure out where those RETURNs return to. So for all you tired of being pasta coders out there, here is my 5-cent solution. (Lucy would be so proud....)

Instead of...

Code: (Select All)

GOSUB pete
END

Pete:
bigger_1 = 1 + 1
IF STEVE = funny_looking THEN RETURN
IF ROSES THEN VIOLETS = blue ELSE RETURN
' Blah... Blah... Blah...
PRINT "My GOFORKME page is going viral!"
IF youvehadenough THEN RETURN
LOCATE somewhere, better
RETURN

We could code it this way...

Code: (Select All)

GOSUB Pete
END

Pete:
DO
    bigger_1 = 1 + 1
    IF STEVE = funny_looking THEN EXIT DO
    IF ROSES THEN VIOLETS = blue ELSE EXIT DO
    ' Blah... Blah... Blah...
    PRINT "My GOFORKME page is going viral!"
    IF youvehadenough THEN EXIT DO
    LOCATE somewhere, better
    EXIT DO
LOOP
RETURN

Tune in NEXT time for my second tech tip: DO AND WHILE can be my pal, but NEXT will never hurt me.

Pete