Re: problems/risks due to programming language

[Karl Heuer <snorkelwacker!spdcc!ima!haddock!karl@bloom-beacon.mit.edu>]

In article <1004@micropen> dave@micropen (David F. Carlson) writes:
>What break does is *very* well defined and is no more prone to
>misinterpretation that any other non-linear control flow statement ...

Yes, it's well defined, but what it's defined to do is bad.

For a formal treatment of the above statement, I refer you to my article
<16039@haddock.ima.isc.com>, posted to comp.lang.misc (also .c and .ada) with
this same title.  I haven't seen any rebuttals yet.

>A multi-case switch is very handy in many situations ...

Yeah.  I wish C had this feature, instead of simulating it with fallthrough.

>That you ask the question of the usefulness of break-per-case/multiple-cases
>implies that you haven't sufficient experience with the construct to judge
>its merits/weaknesses.

I don't know about the person you were addressing, but I think I've had
sufficient experience with it.  I certainly question its usefulness in
comparison to something reasonable, like the language I described in my other
article.

In fact, even if you insist that the comparison must be between C and
plain-C-without-break-switch, I think I'd still go for the latter.  I believe
the benefit of not requiring an overloaded keyword to do a break-switch
exceeds the cost of having to use a goto to merge related cases.

Karl W. Z. Heuer (karl@ima.ima.isc.com or harvard!ima!karl), The Walking Lint