IF-THEN-ELSE considered harmful

Authors:
Gerald M. Weinberg;Dennis P. Geller;Thomas W. S. Plum
Affiliations:
State University of New York, Binghamton, New York;State University of New York, Binghamton, New York;State University of New York, Binghamton, New York
Venue:
ACM SIGPLAN Notices
Year:
1975

Citing 1
Cited 11

Letters to the editor: go to statement considered harmful

Communications of the ACM

A place for assembler in structured programming

SIGCSE '77 Proceedings of the seventh SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
ALGOL 68 and structured programming for learner-programmers

Proceedings of the Strathclyde ALGOL 68 conference
Characteristic errors in programming languages

ACM '78 Proceedings of the 1978 annual conference - Volume 2
A different solution for improving the readability of deeply nested IF-THEN-ELSE control structure

ACM SIGPLAN Notices
The hierarchical language system

ACM SIGPLAN Notices
A reminder for language designers

ACM SIGPLAN Notices
On readability of programs with loops

ACM SIGPLAN Notices
IF-THEN-ELSE, again

ACM SIGPLAN Notices
DO-SELECT reconsidered

ACM SIGPLAN Notices
A note on English for decision tables considered harmful and the nested IF-THEN-ELSE

ACM SIGPLAN Notices
The roots of structured programming

SIGCSE '78 Papers of the SIGCSE/CSA technical symposium on Computer science education

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Abstract

Although the if-then-else construct for flow of control is simple in some senses, and certainly superior to unrestricted GO TO logic, the indefinite replication of this structure leads to undesireable program constructs. Other, more extensible control structures may be added to programming languages, while regulating the unrestricted use of if-then-else, in such a way as to reduce the complexity of programs.