Re: Labeled Break (nothing at all whatsoever to do with GOTO)

Sara Golemon wrote: ...

Your take is spot-on. This isn't an extension of functionality, just a "numbered breaks with a name" which is something I've heard requested from several corners (including @zend.com) as a "wouldn't it be nice..."

I wonder if the need for labelled breaks/continues might dissapear (in practice) if those people who could most do with them are given 'goto' (without the no-go-backwards limitation) instead? Everytime I see heavily nested 'break n' statements it makes me wince and the only times there seems to be no real/decent alternative to such nesting is when building some kind of state machine ... state machines being one of the few concrete examples to support the implementation of 'goto' in the first place, no? ...

Since you'd like the label to be moved out of zend_brk_cont_element, then perhaps we can allow this syntax to pull double duty...

devils advocate: what happens when I want to place a 'goto' label just before a while or foreach loop (upon which I haven't put a label)? I ask because I assume that the following 2 statements should be identical no:? <?php LABEL: while(1) { /* ..etc */ ?> <?php LABEL: while(1) { /* ..etc */ ?>

LABEL: whlie(1) { break LABEL; <-- el->brk continue LABEL; <-- el->cont goto LABEL; <-- opline->u.opline_num break OTHERLABEL; <-- error continue OTHERLABEL; <-- error goto OTHERLABEL; <-- opline->u.opline_num } OTHERLABEL: nonBreakContainerStatement();

This construct has logic and make sense, but I am not sure that we should incrise complication of PHP compiler without any serious benefits. Readability is the only one benefit of this patch.

So the question is: How serious is the gain in readability/maintainability? -Sara