Xref: utzoo comp.software-eng:3007 comp.lang.c:26482
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!apple!sun-barr!newstop!regenmeister!chrisp
From: chrisp@regenmeister.EBay.Sun.COM (Chris Prael)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng,comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Errors aren't that simple
Message-ID: <35338@regenmeister.EBay.Sun.COM>
Date: 2 Mar 90 18:27:00 GMT
References: <8201@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc. - Mtn View, CA
Lines: 20

From article <8201@hubcap.clemson.edu>, by billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe, 2847 ):
>    The crash apparently was caused by a programmer who used a "break"
>    within an if (which itself was within a switch) for the purpose of
>    exiting the if; the real result was to exit the switch instead.  If
>    C provided a case statement rather than a switch..break system, then
>    the error would most likely have been prevented.

The problem was obviously the ignorance of the programmer.  Blaming the
fruits of that ignorance on the language in which he/she was programming
is a comperable error.   The syntax of the switch construct and the
functionality of break have been well defined for well over a decade.

It would be much more constructive, and more appropriate to software-eng,
to observe that such a primitive error would have been caught and fixed, 
before it had a chance to do any damage, if the organization in which the 
routine was developed observed the practice of code reviews.  This might
not be a popular answer in some circles, but it is the only competant
answer to this problem.

Chris Prael