We all have personal preferences and make lifestyle choices that make sense for each of us. This is evident in our individual programming styles. Over the years I’ve worked under mandates for variable naming conventions; prohibitions on program structure; program comment requirements; error handling; use of table-driven input; common variables; and source code revision schemes.
I’ve also worked in a managerial capacity and have designed and implemented coding standards for a team of developers. Imposing standards on developers is largely a thankless task and is rarely received well by the most talented and creative developers. That said, I believe strongly that standard coding practices can be extremely valuable when applied with some flexibility.
A comprehensive discussion of BASIC programming standards can be found here.
Personally I prefer to write UniBasic code without attempting to indent each line of code. While this preference is often viewed skeptically it has served me extremely well when writing and editing programs that utilize extensive embedded logical loops.
An important tool I have used for many years is CLIST. This program was written by an old colleague of mine and I’m providing it here in the interest of sharing its benefits with any UniBasic programmer looking for an excellent way to manage deeply embedded logic loops. Review the comments below for information on available command line switches and functions.
Please note that BasicMVreports assumes no liability for the use of this or any other posted UniBasic code so please review before using in your particular environment.
I’ve also made extensive use of EXAMDIFF to compare versions of a program. This is a very useful comparison tool for text files … and it’s free.
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