Switch syntax; pedagogical nightmare?

[Gavin Bierman]

That’s right. But they are useful for cases where you are essentially doing OR patterns, e.g.

switch (x): {
    case Float _ :
    case Integer _ :
    case Double _ : /* do something */ break;
    default: // do something else
}

Gavin

> On 3 Aug 2017, at 08:25, Tagir Valeev <amaembo at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Actually fall through case is not so trivial. Consider
> 
> switch (x) {
> case Foo(var a, var b):
>  System.out.println(a+":"+b);
>  //fallthru
> case Bar(var c, var d):
>  System.out.println(c+":"+d);
>  break;
> }
> 
> So when we fall through, c and d are not defined. Thus this code should
> result in compilation error. Seems that the scenarios when fall through is
> actually  possible are quite rare.
> 
> Tagir Valeev.
> 
> 3 авг. 2017 г. 6:43 AM пользователь "Brian Goetz" <brian.goetz at oracle.com>
> написал:
> 
>> 
>>> I just watched the Java One talk by Brien, and can't help but feel that
>>> overloading the 'switch' keyword for pattern matching is a hell of a
>>> mistake. I realize the appeal in that it doesn't introduce a new keyword
>>> due to backwards source compatibility, but feel like it's a pedagogical
>>> nightmare.
>>> 
>>> Having the break;s left off is clearly desirable for pattern matching
>> that
>>> involves destructing, but you are going to be leading so many newbies to
>>> using switch statements (as opposed to expressions) without break,
>>> expecting it to behave similar to the new expression usage of switch.
>> 
>> I think you have misinterpreted what is being proposed.  Statement switch
>> with patterns has exactly the same control flow behavior as it does without
>> patterns — there is no relationship between whether the case labels are
>> patterns and the break/fallthrough behavior.
>> 
>> Similarly, if we introduce a switch *expression* (whose syntax would
>> differ from statement switch), again this has nothing to do with patterns;
>> it will behave the same way with patterns and without.
>> 
>> So, the sky is not falling ;)
>> 
>>