what is the disadvantage of evaluate verb

anujageorge · New User Joined: 28 Mar 2007 Posts: 4 Location: Cochin

hi ,

plz tell what is the advantage and disadvantage of evaluate verb

munikumar · New User Joined: 18 Apr 2007 Posts: 24 Location: India

EVALUATE is the case statement in COBOL.

You can validate a condition with multiple checkings. It will give you a cleare picture and more understandability. There are number of EVALUATE syntaxes that we can use.

For example,

EVALUATE TRUE
WHEN <condition1>
statement-1s
WHEN <condition2>
statement-2s
.
.
WHEN OTHER
statement-os
END-EVALUATE.

anujageorge · New User Joined: 28 Mar 2007 Posts: 4 Location: Cochin

what is its disadvantage

William Thompson · Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2007 2:52 pm

What makes you think there is a disadvantage?

gauravgupta2808 · Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2007 2:56 pm

Disadvantages against what ...
If i consider IF-ELSE & EVALUATE, then IF-ELSE affects readability if there are many comparisons.. There EVALUATE is better option.

socker_dad · Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2007 12:26 am

EVALUATE clause is good, very good.

Stacks of IF ELSE END-IF, IF ELSE END-IF, ad naseum are not good (if you are lucky enough to actually find END-IF used....).

Make us happy, use EVALUATE!

Seriously, there are no disadvantages to using EVALUATE, unless your aim is to write code that is hard for maintenance programmers to understand. Personally, I'd rather wade through two screens of Evaluates than a page of IF/ELSE/END-IF.

Phrzby Phil · Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2007 1:31 am

Good programming practice also calls for your last WHEN being WHEN OTHER, with either legitimate "other" processing code, or an error indicator if every possible case has been defined by the previous WHEN's, even if you know they have been.

No one will complain, quite the contrary, by the "extra" code. If nothing else, a future modification may screw up your perfect program.