Continuous Flow Charts

Abstract

The current concept of the flow chart for documenting a computer program seems to be more heavily influenced by its business data processing background than by its mathematically oriented inception. The result of this is a loss of definition which inhibits further developments in program documentation. This paper proceeds from an analysis of the structure of a program and how this structure is represented by a flow chart to derive an extension of this: continuous flow charts. A continuous flow chart, which may be constructed from a conventional flow chart by removing its points of (flow) discontinuity, is shown to be a form of docu mentation ideally suited for large-scale programs that by their nature involve complex logic (such as a war-game simulation). The motivation for continuous flow charting is the pos sibility of dynamic documentation arising from a set of such flow charts. That is, the requirements suggested in this paper for a flow chart to be called continuous pro vide an inductive definition for the members of a set of levels of documentation of a simulation (such that the ease of a user's level to level transition of understanding [the logic depicted] is maintained). Such a set would have, at its highest level, a flow chart picturing the overall logic of the entire simulation, and, at successively lower levels it would contain flow charts describing smaller portions of the program in greater detail. An actual machine-language program would constitute the lowest level of documentation in this set. Since the creation of such a set of continuous flow charts can be started from either the highest level or the lowest level, then this procedure should serve equally well for either developing a complex program from its most basic logical conception, or for documenting such a program as has already been written.