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From: kassover@jupiter.crd.ge.com (David Kassover)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.misc,comp.lang.modula2,comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: problems/risks due to programming language, stories requested
Message-ID: <5915@crdgw1.crd.ge.com>
Date: 9 Mar 90 16:18:33 GMT
References: <1004@micropen> <8218@hubcap.clemson.edu> <2596@gmu90x.gmu.edu> <Mar.8.10.19.49.1990.3812@atanasoff.rutgers.edu> <672@software.software.org>
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In article <672@software.software.org> ciardo@software.org (Gianfranco Ciardo) writes:
...
>
>I think you miss completely the point.
>Using subroutines is not going to help you make the code shorter, more compact,
>or less repetitious (which is not) in a case like this:
>
>          switch (what_to_do) {
>                    case FIVE_THINGS:
>                            <statementA>;
>                    case FOUR_THINGS:
>                            <statementB>;
>                    case THREE_THINGS:
>                            <statementC>;
>                    case TWO_THINGS:
>                            <statementD>;
>                    case ONE_THING:
>                            <statementE>;
>                    case NOTHING:
>                            break;
>          }

No, but without fall through, you would write such a thing upside
down.  Or do something else.
 
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned a (please bear with me) Fortran
preprocessor called FLEX, which provided 4 kinds of case
statement, two with fall through, two without.
 
One instance:  A particular programmer, whom I have worked with
for about 10 years, rarely, if ever, used the FLEX
cases-with-fallthrough.
 
Now that he has learned C (and not recently, bTW), it seems like
he goes out of his way to *USE* fall-through.


I wonder why it is so difficult for language designers to provide
more than one way to do things?