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The effect of scope delimiters on program comprehension
Author(s) -
Sykes Floyd,
Tillman Raymond T.,
Shneiderman Ben
Publication year - 1983
Publication title -
software: practice and experience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.437
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1097-024X
pISSN - 0038-0644
DOI - 10.1002/spe.4380130908
Subject(s) - scope (computer science) , program comprehension , listing (finance) , statement (logic) , computer science , programming language , software engineering , linguistics , business , software , philosophy , finance , software system
Scope delimiters, such as BEGIN‐END or DO‐END, are used in many programming languages, but they can lengthen and clutter a program listing. This paper provides experimental evidence that ENDIF or ENDWHILE statement terminators make for easier to comprehend programs than BEGIN‐END pairs surrounding compound statements.