This thesis presents the concepts of structured programming and illustrates how they can be
used to develop efficient and reliable programs and aid in language selection. Topics are
presented and used to compare several languages with each other rather than with some
abstract ideal.
Structured design is a set of concepts that aids the decomposition of a problem using basic
block structures into manageable subproblems. Decomposition is a process whereby the large
problem is decomposed into components that can be easily understood. This process is
continued until the smallest component can be represented by a unit of code performing a
single action. By means of the four basic building blocks the atom, concatenation, selection,
and repetition one can produce a correct well structured program. In addition, the top-down
approach and/or the bottom up approach can assist in producing a structured program that is
easy to design, code, debug, modify, and maintain. These approaches minimize the number of
bugs and the time spent in the debugging process. Various testing techniques supporting the
structured programming process are presented to aid in determining a program's correctness.
The languages must support structured programming. Microsoft FORTRAN, Microsoft QuickBASIC, Turbo Pascal, and Microsoft C are analyzed and compared on the basis of
syntactic style, semantic structure, data types and manipulation, application facilities, and
application requirements. Example programs are presented to reinforce these concepts.
Frame programs are developed in these languages and are used to assist in the language
evaluation.
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