I have never made a living by programming but 32 years ago in
October my first FORTRAN program compiled and ran as required on
an RCA time share computer. I used a teletype machine with an
acoustic couple 300 baud modem. Those old chunche chunck chuncks
you hear I heard. 

	To the point, many people keep asking how to do this and that
"their" way. Their way may not be possible. I remember BYTE
running a contest (not prizes but recognition for first
submission) of different ways to do a LOOP. There were over 120
different ways that they published. I remember questioning a few
of them as being different but at least 100 were legit. And that
was without C code type differences. i=i+1 and i+ were considered
the same before publication. 

	So when people post asking who to do what they are familiar with
in this language, the impolite person says to learn a few more
languages. But there are so many people who do not know any
language that answer is unfair. 

	So far as I have used the interpreter routines, what exists in
POV 3.x is closest to an assembly routine. Do not expect things
to take care of you. Expect to take care of them yourself. 

	The good news for those not knowing a computer language is that
the WHILE implementation is what serious programers learn to get
around if they are stuck with a real high level language. 

	What I am trying to say is that if you master the POV WHILE you
will later view every other loop as something making it easier
for you to do; something that is holding your hand, a shortcut. 

	As another point, there is no reason to put a routine outside of
your loop as a macro unless there is a conditional inside your
loop to do to different macros. Programming is not a college
test. Programming is productivity. 

	People have asked how to do that. First ask why do that. Even
with an #IF statement they can be done inside the loop. 

	I am not trying to define the language but rather, if you know
enough to ask that kind of question, you should know the answer
UNLESS you are trying to copy someone else's code. 

	Start over, simplify, get back to basics.

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http://www.giwersworld.org/artii/
http://www.giwersworld.org/artiii/

Finally up on 99/06/22 updated 07/13

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