Lambda vs. function

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Oct 21, 2008, at 6:14 PM, Waldemar Horwat wrote:

> Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
>> I don't think you can represent tail position in a switch statement  
>> with your "attribute grammar" notion, but it's clear to me that the  
>> statement immediately before a break statement, or else the last  
>> statement in the last case or default clause, is in tail position.  
>> There is no reason this should be any different than the if/else  
>> case.
>> Regards,
>> Maciej
>
> Of course, if you do that then you're back to what Dave was  
> complaining about:  break becomes like return in that it can jump  
> out of various kinds of places.  For example:
>
> switch (x) {
> case 1: {
>   if (x) {
>     g();
>     break;
>   }
>   h();
>   break;
> }
> case 2:
>   try {
>     h();
>     break;
>   } finally ...
> case 3:
>   ...
> }


Breaking out of an if seems non-problematic to me, you could imagine  
rewriting all such if statements where everything after it is in an  
else clause, and then it would be clear that in case 1 both g() and  
h() are in tail position (assuming the switch statement itself is).  
However nothing inside a "try" block can be in tail potion since there  
is implied control context. That's a problem with "try", though, not  
with "switch". Obviously wrapping with "switch" cannot turn a non-tail  
position into a tail position.

You could probably define a rigorous transform to apply to a swtich()  
statement that turns it into a series of if / else clauses (possibly  
duplicating later cases if there is no break) and apply the usual if  
rule to that transform to get case statements into the attribute  
grammar more formally. For example the above could transform as  
something like:

if (x == 1) {
     if (x) {
         g();
     } else {
         h();
     }
} else if (x == 2) {
     try {
       h();
     finally ...
     ... // duplicate case 3 assuming there was no break
} else if (x == 3) {
     ...
}

Then it's clear that the first two calls can be in tail position but  
the third cannot by the usual rules for if(). It doesn't make sense to  
treat switch differently just because the syntax is different.

Regards,
Maciej