it is a software development technique that imposes a hierarchical structure on the design of the program. It starts out by defining the solution at the highest level of functionality and breaking it down further and further into small routines that can be easily documented and coded. Also called "stepwise refinement".
structured programming
Techniques that impose a logical structure to the coding of a program in order to make it easy to follow. Large routines are broken down into small modules that have to be methodically and carefully nested within each other, because the use of the GOTO statement is either discouraged or not available in the language. Structured walkthroughs, which invite criticism from peer programmers, are also used.
Structured languages, such as Pascal, Ada and dBASE, force the programmer to write a structured program; however, all programming languages can be written in a structured manner.
