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From: Matthew Heaney <matthew_heaney@acm.org>
Subject: Re: Software landmines (loops)
Date: 1998/08/31
Message-ID: <m31zpxqutn.fsf@mheaney.ni.net>#1/1
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NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1998 10:55:43 PDT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel,comp.object,comp.software-eng,comp.lang.ada
Date: 1998-08-31T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

ahussey@it.uq.edu.au (Andrew Hussey) writes:

> >Using an exit from the middle avoids the headaches (literally)
> >engendered by using an extra flag in the predicate.  When you want to
> >exit, you just say that you want to exit, directly.  No mental
> >gymnastics are required in order to determine whether you'll "really"
> >exit, as would be the case using the flag approach.
> 
> That's brilliant, now your code is much easier to write!
> Now let's see who has an easier time *testing* their code.
> I think you'll find the control-flow errors you introduce
> in the spaghetti you produce will more than make up for
> any gain you have from rapid coding.  

Here's is something I whipped up for another post recently.  It's an
equality operator for a bounded stack.  

The implementation of the function has multiple returns.

Does this implementation fit your definition of spaghetti code?

Would the implementation be better by not using multiple returns?


function "=" (L, R : Stack_Type) return Boolean is
begin

   if L.Top /= R.Top then
      return False;
   end if;

   for Index in Positive range 1 .. L.Top loop
      if L.Items (Index) /= R.Items (Index) then
         return False;
      end if;
   end loop;

   return True;

end "=";


My feeling is that trying to implement this operation using only a
single return would just make it more complicated.