[thechat] Anybody Remember IIF?

[Luther, Ron]

Hi Joe | Joel,


Joe had it correct.  The "immediate if" syntax was an "IIF(condition, true
thing, false thing)".  e.g. IIF(Len(TN_Input) < 10, Message = "Too Small to
be a phone number", Message = "Thanks - I'll call!")   {COULD be a 'mem
fault' - but I don't remember having to type the screwy IIf case mixture.)

Here's an MS article on "rolling your own" in ASP:
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q219/2/71.asp


I keep thinking it might have been a command available in WATFOR or WATFIV -
back around 1980, maybe? - but I couldn't find it.  There is a stirring in
the old gray matter that I may have abused it to write some spectacularly
reprehensible spaghetti code ... the handful of examples I've been able to
find show a use of the command as above to set a variable value ... Buuuut,
I'm pretty sure you were allowed to put things like "GOTO 300, GOTO 700" as
your 'true' and 'false' expressions - which means you get to create 'orphan'
code chunks, improper loop exits and entrances, and all kinds of wonderful
things to pass on to someone else to maintain.  Hmmmm ... I wonder if that's
more an explanation of why we can't use this command anymore - or a
confession of why I liked the little bugger?   ;-)


I DID find a reference to an old, deprecated, "arithmetic if" function in an
on-line FORTRAN77 manual, (An "on-line" FORTRAN77 manual??? Dare we ask ...
"Why?"), which had a form of "IF (expression) label1, label2, label3" which
would provide a branch to the appropriate label if the expression evaluated
to negative, zero, or positive.   Naturally, this command supports similar
kinds of baaaaad programming practices.


RonL. - Who's put way too much time into researching this nonsense ... Yes
folks, It's definitely time to come up with some NEW nonsense!