the 'broken' statement - (nf)

[essick at uiuccsb.UUCP]

#R:utzoo:-323200:uiuccsb:9000003:000:946
uiuccsb!essick    Oct 13 13:34:00 1983

Seems to me that the easiest way to implement the "first i in list"
construct in C is the following:

	for ( i=0;i < Limit; i++)	/* check the candidates */
	    if ( condition )
		break;
	if ( i == Limit )		/* or whatever it asumes */
	{				/* when it overruns the list */
	    not found;
	}
	else
	{
	    found;			/* and it is element "i" */
	}

If the collection of items to be checked is a linked list, change
the appropriate for conditions and make the found/notfound test
a comparison to NULL.

How would you specify the list?  Is it always an array? a linked list?
a binary tree?  a completely specified list of simple [== non array]
variables?  Have the compiler understand about all these data structures?
Blech.

The only case I can think where this might help is in PASCAL where
you don't have a break statement; PASCAL would benefit more from
adding a break statement than adding this construct.

-- Ray Essick, University of Illinois