Breaking out of several nested loops (& ANSI C)

[Dick Dunn]

Bad confusion on the multi-level break issue:

> One of the proposals that was supposed to be brought up before the last
> committee meeting was a way to make breaking out of deeply nested loops
> structured such that the following:
>  [illustration of multi-level-break problem]
> would become:
> --  whileloop:
>...
> -- 				break whileloop;
>...
> The idea is to be able to label while, for and do-while loops and be able to
> use those labels on break and continue statements. This provides for a very
> structured and much more readable and maintainable coding style, in my
> opinion, than the equivalent code using goto's or separate procedures...
>...
> What does everyone think? Is this a worthy attempt at making the language
> more structured and orthogonal? Send in your votes!

The idea for such a language construct is reasonable, but it should not be
muddled into the standardization process.  Standards committees working on
existing languages are NOT in the role of designing, or even revamping, a
language.  Naturally, they will have to make some changes--but only for
those situations where there is a very real problem in the existing form(s)
of the language.

In fact, the proposed construct does not answer any particular crying need.
Multi-level breaks are comparatively uncommon.  They certainly aren't so
common and so much of a problem as to justify a CHANGE to the language.

Finally, the proposed solution has a very interesting characteristic:

	Without the extension, the multi-level break has two parts--a
	transfer and a label.

	With the extension, the multi-level break has two parts--a transfer
	and a label.

The notable difference is that with the extension, the label is at a
different point (possibly by quite a distance) than the point to which
control is actually transferred.  I'm hard-pressed to see that as an
advantage.
-- 
Dick Dunn	{hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd		(303)444-5710 x3086
   ...Relax...don't worry...have a homebrew.