Re: stopping a loop iteration without exiting it

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Paul Rubin" <no.email@nospam.invalid> wrote in message 
news:87shbki0et.fsf@nightsong.com...
...
> If a construct is useful, then the existence of an ugly workaround for
> its absence doesn't make it non-useful.

But "usefulness" by itself is not the question. Almost every special syntax 
proposed is useful for something. The question is more whether it is useful 
AND commonly used enough to be part of the language. Because every special 
language gadget has a cost in learning, readability, and the like. The 
larger a language is, the harder it is to learn and read, regardless of the 
merits of the individual features.

Also, in this case, making "continue" a reserved word would break a lot of 
existing code that uses gotos for this feature -- as "continue" is commonly 
used as the name of the label, and that would no longer be legal. So 
programmers who do this a lot would have a significant portability problem. 
Balancing that against the rarity of use for most programmers, and it didn't 
seem worth adding to Ada. (This was for Ada 2005, I believe.)

We (the ARG) have rules against asking precisely the same question that was 
previously answered, lest the same questions be considered over and over. So 
we wouldn't reconsider the decision on "continue" unless something 
significant has changed, and I don't think anything has.

                            Randy.