Best Practices in Rev development

[Devin Asay]

Joe,


> On Jun 21, 2007, at 11:02 AM, Stephen Barncard wrote:
>
>> for me a great advantage of SWITCH is the opportunity for fast and  
>> easy multiple if statements done this way instead:
>>
>> SWITCH pKey
>> CASE "B"
>> CASE return
>> CASE "P"
>> printThePage
>> default
>> doDefaultThing
>> END SWITCH
>>
>> easy to read, easy to write.

On Jun 21, 2007, at 12:07 PM, Joe Lewis Wilkins wrote:

> I agree, much cleaner and easier to follow and write, so long as  
> you don't forget to exit each of the case statements so as not to  
> have subsequent ones executed as well. I believe this is a feature  
> in Rev, though I'd prefer if it weren't.

Until this week I might have agreed with you--the concept that a case  
statement would automatically match subsequent cases unless you  
explicitly add a 'break' command seemed bothersome and obscure. But  
then I began making some changes to a scheduling program I am working  
on. I wanted to do one thing if the scheduled event fell in the 1st  
or 2nd week of the month and something else if it fell in the 3rd or  
4th week and something else still if it fell in the 5th week.

I could have said

switch tWeeknum
case 1
   doThing1
   break
case 2
   doThing1
   break
case 3
   doThing2
   break
case 4
   doThing2
   break
case 5
   doThing3
   break
end switch

Instead, I was able to use the very quick and readable:

switch tWeeknum
case 1
case 2
   doThing1
   break
case 3
case 4
   doThing2
   break
case 5
   doThing3
   break
end switch

It was the first time I'd found this feature useful, and now I'm  
really glad it's there. Suddently the 'break' statements don't seem  
so irksome.

Regards,

Devin

Devin Asay
Humanities Technology and Research Support Center
Brigham Young University