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HELP CONTROL                                          A. Sloman Jul 1982
                                         Revised: Adrian Howard Mar 1992


CONTENTS - (Use <ENTER> g to access required sections)

 -- 1. Procedure call and return, and exit actions
 -- 2. Conditionals
 -- 3. Multi-branch conditionals
 -- 4. GOTO and GO_ON
 -- 5. Iteration
 -- 6. Jumping out of loops (only in current procedure):
 -- 7. Abnormal exits from procedures
 -- 8. Interrupts
 -- 9. Processes.
 -- 10. Terminating a run of POP-11.
 -- 11. Procedures as arguments and results.
 -- 12. Spawning Unix or VMS processes
 -- RELATED DOCUMENTATION

POP-11 provides a variety of ways of transferring control between
procedures or instructions:


-- 1. Procedure call and return, and exit actions ---------------------

The most basic mechanism for transferring control is calling a procedure
and returning from a procedure. The latter is done merely by reaching
the end of the procedure or by using the syntax word -return- (see HELP
*RETURN.) If procedure P1 calls procedure P2, then on return from P2, P1
continues with the next instruction after the call of P1 (if there is
one.)

The use of -dlocal- enables actions to be executed whenever a procedure
is entered or exited. (See HELP * DLOCAL and REF * VMCODE).


-- 2. Conditionals ----------------------------------------------------

Conditional branching instructions are provided by -if- and -UNLESS-.
See HELP *IF, *UNLESS.


-- 3. Multi-branch conditionals ---------------------------------------

These are provided by the -elseif- and -elseunless- clauses of -if- and
-unless- expressions. See HELP *ELSEIF, *ELSEUNLESS. The library macro
-switchon- provides convenient syntax in the form of a generalized
'case' facility. See HELP *SWITCHON.


-- 4. GOTO and GO_ON --------------------------------------------------

-goto- can be used to jump unconditionally to a specified label in the
same procedure. See HELP *LABELS for label formats.

    go_on <expression> to <labels> else <label> ;

If <expression> evaluates to a number, it is used to select the label to
jump to. See HELP *GO_ON.

Lexically scoped non-local labels can also be used. See HELP * GOTO and
REF * VMCODE

Unconditional jumping should be used with great care as it can produce
extremely unreadable code.


-- 5. Iteration -------------------------------------------------------

POP-11 provides a variety of looping constructs. See HELP *LOOPS for a
summary.


-- 6. Jumping out of loops (only in current procedure): ---------------

Doing

    quitloop(n);

causes termination of the Nth enclosing loop. N must be an integer
constant, not a variable or arithmetic expression. N defaults to 1. See
HELP *QUITLOOP.

Doing

    nextloop(n);

causes the Nth enclosing loop to be re-started. What "re-starting"
means depends on the case. E.g. if it is a -while- or -until- loop the
condition will be re-evaluated. If it is a -for- loop, any appropriate
stepping of loop variables, and testing for termination, will be done
and the loop body re-entered.

N defaults to 1. See HELP *NEXTLOOP.

    quitif(<condition>)(n);

is equivalent to:

    if <condition> then quitloop(n) endif;

The '(n)' is optional.

    quitunless(<condition>)(n);

is equivalent to:

    unless <condition> then quitloop(n) endunless;

The '(n)' is optional.

Similarly

    nextif(<condition>)(n)

is equivalent to

    if <condition> then nextloop(n) endif;

and

    nextunless(<condition>)(n)

is equivalent to

    unless <condition> then nextloop(n) endunless;

In all the above the argument N is optional, but if present must be a
constant integer, so that appropriate instructions can be planted at
compile time. If absent it defaults to 1.


-- 7. Abnormal exits from procedures ----------------------------------

Various procedures are provided for this. They unwind the calling stack,
re-setting local variables, and in some cases call a new procedure. See
HELP *CHAIN, *CHAINTO, *CHAINFROM, *EXITFROM, *EXITTO, *JUMPOUT, *CATCH,
and *SETPOP


-- 8. Interrupts ------------------------------------------------------

When CTRL-C is typed, or an error occurs, the procedure held in the
variable *INTERRUPT is invoked (after calling *PRMISHAP in the case of
an error). The default value of *INTERRUPT is -setpop-. Inside VED the
value of -vedinterrupt- is assigned to -interrupt-. The default value is
-veddointerrupt-, which unwinds control back to the VED top level.

For debugging purposes it may be convenient to assign -popready- to
interrupt. See HELP *INTERRUPT, *POPREADY, and *VEDPOPREADY.


-- 9. Processes. ------------------------------------------------------

The procedures *CONSPROC, *CONSPROC_TO, can be used to create processes
which may be run or resumed using the procedures *RUNPROC, *RESUME,
*KRESUME. Processes can suspend themselves using *SUSPEND and *KSUSPEND.

See also *PROCESS, *DEADPROC, *ISPROCESS, *SAVEPROC.

REF * PROCESS gives more details of POP-11 processes.


-- 10. Terminating a run of POP-11. ------------------------------------

The procedure *SYSEXIT causes termination of POP-11, after calling
*POPEXIT, which is user definable. (The default version of -popexit-,
called *VEDPOPEXIT, checks if there are any files left in the VED
buffer, and appropriate so writes them to the disk.)


-- 11. Procedures as arguments and results. ---------------------------

Procedures in POP-11 can accept procedures as arguments and produce
procedures as results. For examples see *MAPLIST, *PARTAPPLY,
*PROCEDURE, *CHAIN, *EXITTO, *EXITFROM, *CHAINTO, *CHAINFROM, *APPLIST


-- 12. Spawning Unix or VMS processes ---------------------------------

REF * SYSUTIL (in UNIX POPLOG) describes SYSFORK and related procedures,
which enable a additional UNIX processes to be created using "pipes" for
communication. See also HELP * SYSFORK.

*SYSEXECUTE can be used to replace the current process with a run of
some other program. It is often used in a process spawned using
-sysfork-.

For VMS users, see -sysattach- and -sysspawn- in REF *SYSUTIL.

In both UNIX and VMS *SYSOBEY and *SYSOBEYLIST allow the current process
to be suspended while some other commands are run.


-- RELATED DOCUMENTATION ----------------------------------------------

REF *PROCEDURE  --- describes the nature of POP-11 procedures
REF *SYNTAX     --- describes POP-11 syntax words
REF *POPSYNTAX  --- gives POP-11 syntax diagrams
REF *VMCODE     --- defines the underlying POPLOG virtual machine
REF *FASTPROCS  --- describes "fast" non-checking procedures
REF *SYSUTIL    --- facilities for communicating with the operating
                    system, including pawing sub-processes

HELP *ACTIVE_VARIABLES  --- describes a type of identifier associated
                            with a procedure which is run when it is
                            accessed or updated.



--- C.all/help/control -------------------------------------------------
--- Copyright University of Sussex 1992. All rights reserved. ----------