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From: bilmes@icsib.Berkeley.EDU (Jeff Bilmes)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c++
Subject: Re: case()
Keywords: case statement
Message-ID: <26857@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 8 Aug 90 20:53:20 GMT
References: <26842@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU
Reply-To: bilmes@icsib (Jeff Bilmes)
Organization: International Computer Science Institute, Berkeley, CA
Lines: 32

In article <26842@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> krste@ICSI.Berkeley.EDU ( Krste Asanovic) writes:
>The C/C++ switch statement is very limited as it only allows integer
>expressions. I'd like to suggest a more general case statement.
>The syntax would be,
>
>    case (exp) {
>        case val1 : s1;
>        case val2 : s2;
>        default : sOther;
>    }
>
> ...

I think this is unnecessary. C++ is already a large language and new 
features which don't have important semantic advantages should 
be avoided. The case statement you mention above would only add
type checking and non compile time constants "switched" on in a (I
presume) syntactically pleasing way. This does not warrant
extending the language when you can do the semantic equivalent as
easily as:

    if (exp == val1) 
	s1 
    else if (exp == val2)
	s2
    else if (exp == val3 || exp == val4 || exp == val5 || ...)
	s3
    ...

----------------------------------------------------------
 Jeff Bilmes        arpa: bilmes@icsi.berkeley.edu
                    uucp: ...!ucbvax!icsi!bilmes