Re: IF or SWITCH

On Thursday 06 April 2006 11:20, tedd wrote: > At 1:04 PM -0400 4/6/06, Robert Cummings wrote: > >On Thu, 2006-04-06 at 11:50, tedd wrote: > >> Regardless of speed, I find that switch is much easier to write and > >> debug than if/elseif -- which, regardless of my shortcomings, I never > >> use. > > > >Umm, that you NEVER use elseif I think is strongly coupled with your > >shortcomings :l But I'm not judging, to each his own :| > > > >Cheers, > >Rob. > > Rob: > > Yes NEVER -- as for my shortcomings, they remain as obvious as is my > lack of pretense otherwise. Whereas, my abilities, like most, are not > as obvious. As Will Roger's once said "We're all ignorant, only in > different subjects." > > But regardless of my limitations, I still have never had to use an > if/elseif for anything -- and I wrote my first line of code in 1966. > I don't remember specifically just when if/elseif and switch-like > conditionals first appeared in programming (they haven't always been > there and my old Fortran books have been long stored) but I have one > in front of me that's dated 1976 where it just mentions "The Logical > IF Statement" with no if/else or switch-like statements. > > So, my programming probably predates both conditions -- however -- in > 40 years I have NEVER used an if/elseif control structure by any name > and I always found a way around it -- and one that was usually faster > and with better readability. > > If your strong-comings are better than my shortcomings, then perhaps > you could provide an example of where a switch could not preform what > an if/elseif could -- do you have one? > > My gut feeling is that you can't -- as well as my gut feeling that > when language developers first thought of if/elseif control, they > realized that it was confusing and provided a switch to get around > it. But, then again, maybe I'm wrong -- been there before. :-) > > tedd > -- > --------------------------------------------------------------------------- >----- http://sperling.com I'm pretty sure he's ONLY talking about IF/ELSEIF and not IF in general. That's what I got from the message. Correct me if I'm wrong. I ended up deciding to stay with the IF/ELSEIF statements... mostly because I was already done. I did clean up the COUNT()ing though. Always nice when the list helps out :) -- Ray Hauge Programmer/Systems Administrator American Student Loan Services www.americanstudentloan.com 1.800.575.1099