WITH statement

[Dave Haynie]

> Summary: no danger--it's like a procedure
>
> The "scary" part of the `with' statement--the loss of qualifier in front of
> field selectors--is no problem at all in practice because `with' statements
> tend to be intensive activity on the records being manipulated.  I've
> observed that `with' statements tend to be either fairly short (probably
> under 10 lines) or the entirety of a procedure where the `with' opens one
> or more of the procedure's parameters--for example:
>       procedure xxx(p: pwhatzy);
>       ...decls
>       begin with p^ do begin
>       ...work on the object referenced by p
>       end end;
>
> I've written a lot of Pascal and a lot more C.  Mostly I find C faster to
> write, but when I start writing a sequence of code to fill in a structure,
> I sure miss the `with' statement.
> --
> Dick Dunn     {hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd         (303)444-5710 x3086
>    ...At last it's the real thing...or close enough to pretend.

Ideally.  Though I had a job one time translation large chunks of Pascal
code to C.  This was on a large CAD project, in other words, a big, non
trivial, etc. example of Pascal.  There were sections of the Pascal
code with 5-10 levels of nested WITH statements.  You get identifiers
flying around all over the place, with no concept as to which structures
they belong to (at least, not without referring to about six pages of
RECORD declarations to track them down). Its may be very nice to
have the WITH construct available when writing code, but its main purpose
when maintaining or translating code is to create confusion and obstruct
the real purpose of the code you're examining.  It could lead to more
efficient code when used properly, though I wonder if anyone thinks of
the troubles involved when using it on a large sca be believed!
   The reviewer now moves to the traitorous character who wishes to leave
his beloved homeland. It is so sad that his activities are praised and
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But to get a job, you must have permission to live in the city. See? And the
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they just like to shave their heads after military service as a sign to their
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This book tries to give the impression that Russians are a besotted,
hopeless bunch of victims of their leaders and the Communist Party!
The descriptive scenes of medical care are fabrications