Funny how being nitpicked ..

even changes the way I do my daily work on the IBM mainframe.
Example :
In the old days I would think nothing of coding this (in PL/1) :

Now I coded it like this :

the != is not correct PL/1 but I cant find the correct char here x'5F' in EBCDIC

PL/1 -- holy cow, old languages do never die!!
I'm still on the fence about not-logic. There are some instances where it is easier and makes sense, and others where it is just old habit.
We have some horrendous code that uses not-named variables with not logic

The genius who coded that was also not consistent with how he loaded the variable. So notFinished=False could mean it was finished or not finished, depending on his whims.
As per your code, I try to avoid null code blocks, and when I use them, I make sure to put a comment in saying that I know it is blank.
Bruce.

I agree. It is sometimes clearer to use != than to always use ==. In natural language it would be possible to avoid using "not", but sometimes using it is the simplest way to say something.

Yes I dont like null statements either but heck I was work on a thight schedule today, the code had to run before 17:00, else I had to wait another week to test it. Sort of snap shot moment of the PDS'd directories of our production libaries at 17:00.
As for the negative "! finished" it makes a "moerse" lot of sense to me. I suppose one can, or rather should, do something like this :

Am I getting the point Marilyn ???

[This message has been edited by Johannes de Jong (edited March 17, 2001).]