Writing Extensions

[Mark Waddingham]

Hi Kay

On 2017-05-24 10:19, Kay C Lan via use-livecode wrote:
> In that last one the only inference I could find was that due to the
> probability that in 97% of use 'fall through' is not intended, a whole
> heap of typing could be saved if no keyword (break) was required for
> the 97%, and a keyword was only used to activate fall through. i.e.
> 
> switch yourName
> case "Mark"
>   -- do something
> break
> case "John"
> case "Jon"
>   -- do somethingElse
> break
> case "Ali"
>   -- do anotherThing
> break
> end switch
> 
> would become
> 
> switch yourName
> case "Mark"
>   -- do something
> case "John"
>    fall --or some other keyword
> case "Jon"
>   -- do somethingElse
> case "Ali"
>   -- do anotherThing
> end switch
> 
> 
> 11 less character to write. Is this the only problem with the current
> implementation of Switch?

Okay so I was perhaps a little vociferous in what I said... However, 
fallthrough is
the key problem - there have been numerous subtle bugs in the engine due 
to it
(similarly, switch statements without 'default' can cause subtle
bugs too - if you add a value to an enum, but don't update all the 
switches which
switch on it).

Perhaps a better model would be to use 'continue', rather than 'break':

switch yourName
   case "Mark"
     -- do something and finish
   case "John"
     continue
   case "Jon"
     -- do something else
end switch

The idea being that 'continue' in a case, jumps to the next choice to 
check. This works particularly nicely when you don't have an expression, 
so the cases can be expressions as that essentially gives you a 'match' 
type construct with back-tracking (quite useful for processing 
hierarchical arrays and transforming them - a common operation in 
writing compilers, for example).

However, it would probably be better to change the switch syntax to use 
different keywords (perhaps choice?). The 'switch'/'case'/'break' 
paradigm is so ubiquitous (due to C) that making it work differently 
would be very jarring.

Warmest Regards,

Mark.

-- 
Mark Waddingham ~ mark at livecode.com ~ http://www.livecode.com/
LiveCode: Everyone can create apps