Improvement to switch-case statement

[John Reimer]

Hello John,

> Hello Michel,
> 
>> On 2008-12-31 18:22:32 -0500, "Adam D. Ruppe"
>> <destructionator at gmail.com> said:
>>> This wouldn't be any less efficient than any other switch statement;
>>> writing
>>> 
>>> case 2..5:
>>> code;
>>> break;
>>> could just be magically converted into
>>> case 2:
>>> case 3:
>>> case 4:
>>> case 5:
>>> code;
>>> break;
>> Except that if you want to keep consistency with array slices, 2..5
>> should probably not include 5 in the range, thus should be equivalent
>> "case 2,3,4". Unfortunatly, that's generally not what you want when
>> creating such cases. Imagine writting:
>> 
>> case 'a'..'{':
>> case 'A'..'[':
>> Concistent, yes; but not very appealing. What you want to be able to
>> write is this:
>> case 'a'..'z':
>> case 'A'..'Z':
>> But then it doesn't work as elsewhere in the language anymore.
> Good point.  So while the '..' is potentially useful, it may just be
> simpler to implement something like a range macro rather than suffer
> the risk of such an inconsistancy.
> 
> -JJR
> 


Of course, here it seems we're starting to enter the domain of regular expression 
parsing anyway, so it leaves one wondering if it's worth fixing up the switch 
statement too much for this. :)   Very likely better to pursue a macro-like 
epression here.

-JJR