Origin of Coding Technique

Origin of a technique used to write subroutines

[RWSteele]

I've been migrating and cleaning up a bunch of ASP sites at my current job and I've come across a particular coding "technique" that I find annoying and very hard to follow and would greatly appreciate some opinions.

Here's an example:

MyInclude.asp

<%
sub MySub()
 Var1 = "foo"
 Var2 = "bar"
End Sub
%>

MyPage.asp

<!--include file="MyInclude.asp"-->
<%
Call MySub()
Response.write Var1 & Var2
%>

Although MySub has no arguments and can't return a value, after it's called two variables automagically appear. Amazing! I've also come across similar subroutines that create connections, recordsets, etc.

Now, if I'm not mistaken a Sub is Public by default, but IMHO no arguments and creating variables to use outside the scope of the sub is just asking for trouble. Is this some old school technique or just plain bad coding?

[wardbekker]

The person who wrote that should be fired! ;-)

Well, although VBscript apparently makes this kind of statement possible, it doesn't score high marks for readability.

A possible refactoring is to create a method that returns a class that contains the properties that are needed on each page (Var1, Var2).

[adb64]

This indeed is a very bad coding "technique".
I have more than 20 years experience in coding, mainly C, and if I would code like that my employer would fire me!

[RWSteele]

Thanks for the input. It's nice to know my eye for bad technique is better than it was 6 years ago before I became a lonely code monkey. :)

Thanks again.