switch case for constants-only?

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Ellery Newcomer" <ellery-newcomer at utulsa.edu> wrote in message 
news:hfer6b$15d1$1 at digitalmars.com...
> On 12/05/2009 04:19 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> "Ellery Newcomer"<ellery-newcomer at utulsa.edu>  wrote in message
>>>
>>> More so than remembering to type break after each case block?
>>
>> Good point, but that's really a separate issue.
>>
>>
>
> I don't know about that. The issue seems to be you want switch to behave 
> in a manner unlike that of any other language that I know of.
> It's different. It breaks convention.
>
> It's a useful divergence. It's a feature that should exist. But I contend 
> it makes more sense to make a new construct which *is* equivalent to a 
> certain pattern of nested ifs (switch isn't) and incorporate your feature 
> into that than to shoehorn it into switch.

I definitely agree we need a new switch that isn't so stuck in C-land. And 
if we got it, I'd be perfectly happy to restrict all the new stuff to the 
newer switch and just let C-style switch atrophy into oblivion. But a new 
switch just doesn't seem to be happening :(.

Also, I still don't see how there's any semantic difference between the 
current switch and the switch-like if-else chain other than just the fact 
that switch currently carries the restriction that the values being checked 
against must be unique and known at compile time.