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Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2006 14:12:20 -0000
Message-ID: <CDA511FF6152D14E922434CE338CE8BB2758D5@leedsmet-exch1.leedsmet.ac.uk>
Thread-Topic: [PHP-DEV] GOTO and/or BREAK LABEL
Thread-Index: AcZByvKthEcZFrduRpmgpB55YVOcgwA7DeZw
To: "Dmitry Stogov" <dmitry@zend.com>,
	<internals@lists.php.net>
Subject: RE: [PHP-DEV] GOTO and/or BREAK LABEL
From: M.Ford@leedsmet.ac.uk ("Ford, Mike")

On 07 March 2006 09:28, Dmitry Stogov wrote:

> Please reviw and vote.
>=20
> 1) goto and break label
> 2) goto only (like C)
> 3) break label only (like Java)
> 4) nothing

1) +0.25
2) -1e38
3) +1e38
4) -infinity

Or, in other words, I want labelled break, and I don't want to have to emul=
ate it with goto.

As a user who spent several *days* tracking down a subtle bug caused by a c=
ontinue n that hadn't been altered to continue n+1, I regard labelled break=
 as a vital addition -- for me, it's not the frequency with which it is use=
d (very low, I agree), but the incredibly disproportionate maintenance burd=
en (potentially extremely high).  In my case, I was adding a level to a hea=
vily nested looping/conditional structure (7 or 8 levels deep) extending ov=
er several hundred lines, and out of the few break/continue statements that=
 needed adjusting I missed just one.  If they had been labelled breaks, the=
re would have been *no* maintenance problem, and I'd have had several more =
days on the next step.

If the "Java-like" syntax is seen as confusing, what about, as in some othe=
r languages, interpolating the label into the for/foreach/while statement:

   for (....) label {...}  or  for label (...) {...}

This is clearly a different animal from a goto target label: (but should be=
 in the same namespace, of course).

OK, I'll shut up now and slope off into a corner.  (Perhaps I should design=
 my own language whilst I'm there ... but nah, did that decades ago and got=
 bored -- prefer higher-level programming these days!)

Cheers!

Mike

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