Practical Uses
Although COMEFROM is syntactically and semantically valid, and capable of replacing GOTO in some programs, it is considerably more difficult to visualise in program design and actually implement in a programming language. The most well known use of a COMEFROM-like construct is setting a breakpoint during debugging. One implementation of FORTRAN included it, under the name "AT", as a debugging aid, with dire warnings against using it in production code. In addition, many modern CPUs have hardware support for breakpoints.
Some elements of aspect-oriented programming have been compared to the COMEFROM statement.
In some reversible computing assembly languages, the target of a GOTO is always a COMEFROM targeting the GOTO.
Read more about this topic: COMEFROM
Famous quotes containing the word practical:
“Tried by a New England eye, or the more practical wisdom of modern times, they are the oracles of a race already in its dotage; but held up to the sky, which is the only impartial and incorruptible ordeal, they are of a piece with its depth and serenity, and I am assured that they will have a place and significance as long as there is a sky to test them by.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man?... We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)