[fpc-devel] for-in-index loop

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Fri, 25 Jan 2013, Alexander Klenin wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 at 4:45 AM, Michael Van Canneyt
> <michael at freepascal.org> wrote:
>> Enumerators are not iterators.
> Eh... actually, they are? Why do you think otherwise?
>
>> If you want a full-fledged iterator, you should use classes.
> Enumerators *are* classes, except for built-in ones.
>
>> The for syntax is not meant for that.
> That's debatable.
> There is no for-index support in Java, but there is in most (all?)
> other modern languages --
> Python, PHP, Ruby, etc.
> I suggest that Java is inferior in this regard.
>
>> If you want full fledged iterators, use classes.
> Please provide example of your suggesion for the case in the wiki.

You have your priorities wrong.

I don't need to provide *anything*.

Let's get something clear:

FPC is not the playground for every possible idea out there.

If someone wants to implement some weird syntax: please; 
use FPC to try and test it, create your dissertation, whatnot.

But to expect that it is incorporated in the mainstream FPC distribution is a completely different thing.

Out in the real world, you'll need to prove that this actually is useful and will be used a lot.

"For in" is debatable by itself. It is syntactical sugar, 
it provides nothing that for a:=b to c does not give.

Now you propose to extend this "sugar" syntax with something even more exotic, 
which I have not even encountered in other languages.

I can probably find plenty of use cases for the most weird syntaxes ever.
That doesn't mean they 
a) should be implemented at all,
b) should be included in FPC.

I do not want FPC to become Perl where every possible idea of every contributor 
that popped up on a blue monday was implemented and incorporated.

Go and propose your idea to the gcc team as an extension to C. 
let's see how far you get...

Michael.