problems/risks due to programming language, stories requ

[Dave Kirsch]

> amull writes:
> 
> Msg-ID: <775 at s5.Morgan.COM>
> Posted: 10 Mar 90 17:50:32 GMT
> 
> Org.  : Morgan Stanley & Co. NY, NY
> Person: Andrew P. Mullhaupt
> BTW - fall through and the 'double duty' break keyword are
> definitely examples of C flaws.  If you must, flame me, but in
> comp.lang.c, (OK?)
> 
> Later,
> Andrew Mullhaupt

C flaws?  Do this in Pascal:

switch (i) {
  case 2 :  /* Add 2 to j */
    j++;
  case 1 :  /* Add 1 to j */
    j++;
  case 0 :  /* Print j out */
    printf("%d\n", j);
    break;
  default :
    printf("Illegal value in switch.\n");
    abort();
}

In pascal you have to:

case i of
  2 : begin /* Add 2 to j */
        j := j + 2;
        writeln(j);
      end;
  1 : begin /* Add 1 to j */
        j := j + 1;
        writeln(j);
      end;
  0 : begin /* Print j out */
        writeln(j);
      end;
  else begin
         writeln('Illegal value in case.');
         Halt;
       end;
end;

If you take a look at this, you can see how C's break inside a switch is very
conveinent.  I admit, when I started learning C from when I was a Pascal
programmer I thought it was strange, too.  But I never saw it as a 'flaw'.  I
reliezed there must be a reason for it being like that, now that I'm using C, I
want it like that.  For large switch statements, you can do some really good
code reduction using that technique.  If you comment it well, it looks fine and
runs fine.

--
_____________________________________________________________________
Dave Kirsch           UUCP: {uunet,ubc-cs}!van-bc!rsoft!mindlink!a563
Voice: (604) 327-4404       a563 at mindlink.UUCP
                      Vancouver, British Columbia