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From: shebs%defun.utah.edu.uucp@utah-cs.UUCP (Stanley T. Shebs)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Control flow and common sense
Message-ID: <5473@utah-cs.UUCP>
Date: 7 May 88 14:14:54 GMT
References: <4605@ihlpf.ATT.COM> <41445UH2@PSUVM> <1122@daisy.UUCP>
Sender: news@utah-cs.UUCP
Reply-To: shebs%defun.utah.edu.UUCP@utah-cs.UUCP (Stanley T. Shebs)
Organization: PASS Research Group
Lines: 19

In article <1122@daisy.UUCP> david@daisy.UUCP (David Schachter) writes:

>One fellow I know documented a particularly complex and obscure code with the
>comment "This procudure implements the  algorithm given
>on page  of  by ".  (The angle bracketed items
>are mine.)

Sounds perfectly fine to me.  Why waste all kinds of space repeating other
people's words?  Or worse, not mentioning at all that the algorithm derives
from somewhere else?

In all fairness, the bald citation is insufficient - there should also be
one or two lines like "the algorithm is based on the use of multi-colored
pointers cycling around in something resembling a butterfly FFT".  This will
jog the memory of the informed reader, and strongly suggest to the ignorant
reader that there are a lot of prerequisites to understanding this code.

							stan shebs
							shebs@cs.utah.edu