>>>>> "J" == Joe Van Dyk <joevandyk / gmail.com> writes:

J> I'm not familiar with COBOL though, can someone explain how the
J> 'retry' example in the Pickaxe is supposedly bad?

 Well ALTER in COBOL is something like this (if memory is good)

    PERFORM 10-ACTION THRU 99-EXIT.

    10-ACTION.
* the first call to PERFORM will go here
       ALTER 10-ACTION TO 20-ACTION.
       GOTO 99-EXIT.

    20-ACTION.
* the next call to PERFORM will go here
       GOTO 99-EXIT.

    99-EXIT.
       EXIT.

 When you read the PERFORM statement you can't know where the program will
 go because this can changed latter with a ALTER


Guy Decoux