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From: "Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: code partitioning (was: Future with Ada)
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 12:56:26 -0500
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Well, yea, I could see that - even breaking it up into a "when mammal ...
when others..." case in something like this. It kind of goes to my original
point: You ought to keep ifs and cases short and as unnested as may make
sense for the problem at hand, but don't go crazy.

You've got to use some judgment, thinking "Shortness and non-nestedness are
good things taken from The Book Of Devoutly To Be Desired Results, but lets
not forget that the spirit of the law is to make things readable and
comprehensible" If statements nest for three or four levels or span several
dozen lines, yet remain comprehensible (being a natural reflection of the
problem at hand) and breaking them up would require unnatural acts of
contortion, then don't fight it. Programming is often an "art" that requires
an "artistic eye" rather than an exact science... much like other writing
and communication skills.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Wes Groleau" <wesgroleau@despammed.com> wrote in message
news:3C8E3110.F36F2DC8@despammed.com...
>
> Without actually endorsing this, here's a sort of
> borderline situation:
>
>    case Animal is
>
>       when Horse | Tiger   | Elephant | Whale | Mouse |
>            Dog   | Gorilla | Platypus | Koala | Dingo   =>
>
>          Classify_Mammal (Animal);
>
>       when Lizard | Snake | Alligator | Tortoise =>
>
>          Classify_Reptile (Animal);
>
>       ......
>
>       when others =>
>
>          Classify_Some_Really_Wierd_Thing (Animal);
>
>                         -- gratuitous demo of
>    end case (Animal);   -- yet another way of
>                         -- naming a case statement
>
>   -- to bring it back to the original topic
>   -- now that I've updated the subject line  :-)
>