Backward Jumps

The PROCSY command interpreter had conditionals and forward jumps. The presumably simplified the interpreter logic which was written in Fortran. But it could also issue calls on other commands, including the current command, so I developed the practice of including a computed jump as the first line so that a recursive call could effect a backwards jump.

A jump would read forward in a command until the target label was located. The jump target could be a literal string or a parameter that would expand to a literal string. Thus a computed jump.

While processing a jump, the subsequent lines would be parameter substituted before they were examined for presence of the target label. This added an unusual second level of possible computation with every jump.