social structure

n : the people in a society considered as a system organized by

a characteristic pattern of relationships; "the social

organization of England and America is very different";

"sociologists have studied the changing structure of the

family" [syn: {social organization}, {social system}, {structure}]

control structure

One of the instructions, statements or groups of

statements in a programming language which determines the

sequence of execution of other instructions or statements (the

{control flow}).

In {assembly language} this typically consists of {jumps} and

{conditional jumps} along with {procedure} call and return

though some architectures include other constructs such as an

instruction which skips the following instruction depending on

some condition ({PDP}?), various kinds of {loop} instructions

(later {Motorola 680x0}) or conditional execution of all

instructions (Advanced RISC Machine).

Basic control structures (whatever their names in particular

languages) include "if CONDITION then EXPRESSION else

EXPRESSION", the {switch statement}, "while CONDITION do

EXPRESSION", "gosub", the suspect "{goto}" and the much-feared

"{come from}". Other constructs handle errors and

{exceptions} such as {traps} and {interrupts}.

(1997-09-14)