[switch] Further unification on switch
Kevin Bourrillion
kevinb at google.com
Fri Apr 20 14:15:20 UTC 2018
On Fri, Apr 20, 2018 at 4:09 AM, Victor Nazarov <asviraspossible at gmail.com>
wrote:
This proposal seems alright. But isn't it a division instead of a
> unification?
> The main argument against new shiny match expression was that is will
> exists in parallel with old rusty switch statement.
> Instead the decision was to enhance switch statement to cover use cases of
> match expression.
>
> With last proposal what we get is: old rusty familiar switch
> statement/expression and new shiny arrow-switch statement/expression?
> I see it as the same division that we tried to avoid: two similar, but not
> quite the same syntax-forms.
>
Well, at least they are only different on the *inside*. Whenever looking at
one from the outside, it is still the same black box. (Actually two black
boxes, but *that* split is expression vs. statement.) That's something we
wouldn't have with `match` or a new operator, and that's something.
Here's a fun statistic from Google's codebase. We analyzed every
hand-written switch statement in our depot. Only *2.4%* of them used
fall-through. The number in the real world might be somewhat higher (?),
but we know it to be quite small. Yet, the things about switch that have
been weird, confusing, or dangerous all stem from that fall-through model
that such a tiny fraction need -- how sad!
I think the highest order bit in this discussion, by far, is that we have
found a way to make >95% of all switch statements a lot easier to write and
read. So, *even if* some of us see this as us doing exactly what Brian said
we shouldn't (in his "What we're not going to do") section, I *still* think
it easily clears the bar and will be a very successful change.
--
Kevin Bourrillion | Java Librarian | Google, Inc. | kevinb at google.com
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