Eric Sumner wrote: >>> Forget subroutines for a moment - the main point of the thread was the >>> idea that the dispatch table was built explicitly rather than >>> automatically - that instead of arguing over first-use vs. >>> function-definition, we let the user decide. I'm sure that my specific >>> proposal isn't the only way that this could be done. >> But anything that makes the build explicit is going to be so much more >> ugly. And I still think you're trying to solve the wrong problem. > > Only if the programmer has to see it. The dispatch table need not > include the behaviors of each of the cases; it only needs to define > what the cases are. In most of the use cases I've seen, switch is > used to define behavior for different values of an enumeration. The > dispatch table for an enumeration can be built wherever the values for > the enumeration are defined (such as in a module). Programmers don't > need to bother with making a dispatch table unless they are defining > enumeration values themselves.
You mean something like this?: switch x in colours: case RED: # whatever case GREEN: # whatever case BLUE: # whatever I think Guido's right. It doesn't solve the underlying problem because the compiler still has to figure out how to build a dispatch table from the possible values in colours to the actual bytecode offsets of the cases. Cheers, Nick. -- Nick Coghlan | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Brisbane, Australia --------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.boredomandlaziness.org _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com