Is there ANY chance we can fix the bitwise operator precedence rules?

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 06/21/2010 04:15 PM, Don wrote:
> Jonathan M Davis wrote:
>> Sean Kelly wrote:
>>
>>> Jonathan M Davis Wrote:
>>>> In any case, that means that it could be made required to have a
>>>> control
>>>> statement at the end of a case block without having to specify a
>>>> specific
>>>> destination for fallthrough - though I'd prefer "continue switch" over
>>>> "goto case" since it's more explicit and less error prone (since
>>>> there's
>>>> no doubt that you didn't intend to put a destination for the goto if
>>>> you
>>>> use "continue switch" instead of a "goto case" without a destination).
>>> It's a small thing, but I think "continue switch" could be
>>> misleading. Consider this:
>>>
>>> switch (getState()) {
>>> case X:
>>> setState(Z);
>>> continue switch;
>>> case Y:
>>> break;
>>> case Z:
>>> writeln( "done!" );
>>> }
>>>
>>> Having never encountered D before, what would be your interpretation of
>>> this code?
>>
>> I hadn't thought of that. That could be a source of confusion.
>> However, since a switch statement isn't a loop, and it's not a
>> construct in any other language AFAIK, the person will look it up.
>> Once you've looked it up, I don't think that it would be particularly
>> hard to remember what it actually does. It's quite clear what's going
>> once you've become familiar with the construct and is quite
>> unambiguous in comparison to "goto case" which could easily be missing
>> the target case rather than being meant for fallthrough.
>>
>> So, perhaps it's not immediately intuitive, but many language
>> constructs are, and I think that it's fairly clear once you've looked
>> it up. Having something like "fallthrough" or "goto next case" would
>> of course be even clearer, but those would require new keywords. I
>> still think that "continue switch" would be clearer than "goto case"
>> as well as less error prone. Personally, I think that the fact that
>> it's less error prone alone makes it a better choice even if it were
>> somewhat less clear.
>>
>> - Jonathan M Davis
>
> But 'goto case XXX' is an extremely rarely encountered construct, that
> screams 'Examine this code closely'. So I don't think it needs extra
> error checking.

After Sean's example, goto case XXX is my fave for fallthrough. I don't 
like unlabeled "goto case" to mean fall through, it's one of those "need 
to look in the manual" features. goto case XXX is generalized fall through.

Andrei