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From: phcoates@uqvax.decnet.uq.oz
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Improved switch statement
Message-ID: <1031@uqvax.decnet.uq.oz>
Date: 30 Dec 88 16:15:33 GMT
Organization: University Of Queensland
Lines: 32

In article <9276@ihlpb.ATT.COM> nevin1@ihlpb.ATT.COM(Nevin Liber) writes:
 
|BTW, all of this is irrelevant to the original discussion.  The point
|is that, whether or not we like it, C++ allows you to define an operator
|just about any way you want.  The only useful way to used the proposed
|change to the switch statement requires that I know exactly how it gets
|rewritten as an if-then-else chain, in which case I would rather use the
|if-then-else chain, since it is more 'self-documenting'.

I like code to be consistent.  I could quite easily live with a 'switch'
statement that used the current definition of '=='.  However I understand that,
to account for those individuals who might use the above operator in some new
and unknown way (and *then* think that they can get away with using a 'switch'
with an instance of their new Mickey Mouse class as the selector or as a case
label), a 'switch' structure based on '==' could be inferior to using

			if (...) {
			} else if (...) {
			/* etc. */
			} else {
			}

If so, then why bother to keep the switch statement at all?  Must C++ be chained
to its ancestry if it is better that it fly free?  Surely if the 'if' is better
then any program would be more 'self-documenting' if all such selections were
treated using 'if' constructs.

It comes down to this - either have a 'switch' that uses '==', or get rid of
'switch' all together.  You can't stand with one foot on either side of a
barbed-wire fence.

Tony Coates.