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From: Adam Beneschan <adam@irvine.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Why no named case statements?
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 2009 16:47:03 -0700 (PDT)
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Date: 2009-09-04T16:47:03-07:00
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On Sep 4, 4:06=A0pm, Britt Snodgrass <britt.snodgr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ada allows optional names for loops and declare blocks but not for
> case or if statetements. Why not, since these are also multi-line
> statements that terminate with an 'end" keyword?

Probably because for loops and blocks, the names are useful for
something else.  For loops, you can specify the loop name in an EXIT
statement (useful if you nest loops and want to exit the outer one).
For blocks, the block name can be used as part of an expanded name
(i.e. if you declare a variable V in the declaration portion of the
declare block, you can refer to Block_Name.V).  My guess is that since
the names were needed for those purposes for loops and blocks, but not
for anything else, the original language designers didn't bother to
allow them for other compound statements.


 I sometimes use loop
> names to clearly indicate the purpose of the loop and have wished I
> could do the same for case statements, e.g.,
>
> Decide_This:
> case Some_Variable is
> ...
> end case Decide_This;
>
> or similarly for long if statements:
>
> Decide_That:
> if Whatever then
> ...
> end if Decide_That:

I'd just use comments.

-- Decide_This:
   case Some_Variable is
       ...
   end case; -- Decide_This

                               -- Adam