Call for bikeshed -- break replacement in expression switch

[Doug Lea]

Having lost (nearly) this argument years ago, I'm not sure why I bother,
but ...

On 5/12/19 3:38 PM, Brian Goetz wrote:
>
> Looking at what other languages have done here, there are a few broad
> directions: 
>
>  - A statement like “break-with v”, indicating that the enclosing
> structured expression is completing normally with the provided value.  
>  - An operator that serves the same purpose, such as “-> e”.
>  - Assigning to some magic variable (this is how Pascal indicates the
> return value of a function).  
>  - Treating the last expression in the block as the result. 

(The last one being "progn", the earliest and arguably still best of these.)

>
> I think we can dispatch all but the first relatively easily: ...
>
>
>  - Everywhere else in the language (such as method bodies), you are
> free to yield up a value from the middle of the block, perhaps from
> within a control construct like a loop; restricting the RHS of case
> blocks to put their result last would be a significant new
> restriction, and would limit the ability to refactor to/from methods.
> And further, the convention of putting the result last, while a fine
> one for a language that is “expressions all the way down”, would
> likely be too subtle a cue in Java. 

Last time around, the last point about subtlety and odd-lookingness of
progn seemed to bother people the most.  It is possible to make it  less
subtle by additionally requiring some symbol. Prefix "^" is still
available. Allowing for example:


    String s = (foo != null) 
        ? s
        : { println(“null again at line” + __LINE__);  ^ “null”;  };

Which still lgtm....

-Doug


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