Re: continuing continue - was Re: [patch] continue statement

[David Given <dg@...>]

On Saturday 24 September 2005 07:31, Glenn Maynard wrote:
[...]
> In some old OpenAL code, I found constructs like this nested fifteen (15)
> levels deep--apparently whoever wrote that code had never heard of break,
> continue or return.

I know someone who writes code like that. The reason, however, is to make it 
easy to do cleanup:

a = create()
if a then
	b = create(a)
	if b then
		c = create(b)
		if c then
			d = create(c)
			if d then
				d:dosomething()
				d:destroy()
			end
			c:destroy()
		end
		b:destroy()
	end
	a:destroy()
end

I hate this, and tend to rewrite using gotos, but that's equally messy --- it 
just avoids silly indentation levels. The only 'right' way I know of of doing 
the above is to use exceptions --- which is very wordy, no matter what 
language --- or to leverage the garbage collector, which we can't do in our 
language.

These days when writing C++ I use smart pointer abuse to hide the 
check-and-destroy statements. The resulting code isn't great for efficiency, 
however.

I would *love* a continue statement in Lua --- I find myself wanting it 
frequently. For that matter, I'd rather like goto, as well, but I probably 
shouldn't admit that in public.

-- 
+- David Given --McQ-+ "...thus there might be a great reduction in
|  dg@cowlark.com    | useless expenditure on Nuclear rockets, reducing
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