Data accessibility in structured programing

C. A. R. Hoare, N. Wirth, E. W. Dijkstra, and some others active in structured programing have described and tacitly recommended a hierarchical accessibility of passed data in structured programing (see for example, References 11 and 26). This fits well, they and others indicate, with both the theory and the practice of structured programing (see for example, References 15, 18, 19, and 25). This paper does not question that the hierarchical accessibility with parameter passing can be made to work. It may even be the most elegant data accessibility for some interesting academic problems. However, this paper does argue that for most practical software design situations, other approaches are on balance superior, especially for the kinds of situations commonly implemented using COBOL, FORTRAN, PLll, JOVIAL, or BASIC. To support this argument, this paper presents first some definitions of terms, and then an examination of some evidence in nine categories. Following a ranking evaluation, the paper draws a conclusion.