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From: Brian Rogoff <bpr@shell5.ba.best.com>
Subject: Re: Answering an Ada/COBOL Question
Date: 1999/11/13
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Date: 1999-11-13T00:00:00+00:00
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On Sun, 14 Nov 1999, Robert Dewar wrote:
> In article
> <Pine.BSF.4.10.9911131710530.16406-100000@shell5.ba.best.com>,
> > I don't want to rain on your parade, but how is this nicer
> > than the pattern matching capability that all modern
> > functional programming
> > languages have?
> 
> Sure, these pattern matching facilities handle this capability
> fine, though often not with such convenient syntax. But that's
> besides the point given that none of these "modern functional
> programming languages" are even vaguely suitable for fiscal
> programming.

Let me put back in a quote you snipped to remind you of what the point
I commented on is 

> Richard D Riehle wrote:
> > Yes, indeed. The COBOL version of a case statement is still the
> > most elegant design of multiway selection I have seen in any
> > language.  

I also found the ML version of the case syntactically much nicer. Also,
pattern matching works on more than just sequences of booleans. 
Note that I am not commenting at all on the suitableness of FPs for
fiscal programming, just on the claim of "most elegant case design" for 
COBOL.

-- Brian