From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me
X-Spam-Level: 
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID
	autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4
X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit
X-Google-Thread: 103376,99222a5bd46ef3c9
X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public
From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: GOTO considered necessary (reworked)
Date: 1997/06/20
Message-ID: <dewar.866851293@merv>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 251455535
References: <5nn2fm$11dk$1@prime.imagin.net> <EBpyzK.5pH@world.std.com>
 <33A58C79.1C7A@sprintmail.com> <dewar.866548262@merv>
 <EBxrpn.67C@world.std.com>
Organization: New York University
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-06-20T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Bob Duff said

<<In my experience, a hand-coded lexical analyzer is always better done
with loops and ifs and case statements, rather than as above.  That is,
forget that it's a FSM, and just write it in the natural way.  ("An
identifier is a letter, followed by a sequence of zero or more letters
and digits" translates quite nicely into loops, not gotos.)  I know you
agree, since I've seen the GNAT lexer.>>

You may have seen it, but you have not read it all, it has a number of
gotos of the FSM type in it. Of course it is not full of this, because
FSM's don't have much to do with lexical analyzers except in unusual cases.