Idea
Imagine you have a loop that does multiple things slightly differently. You think about refactoring those similar parts into a single function that takes a few parameters and could even have a nice, descriplive name. And you can’t — because there's a pesky return
or break
statement that just wouldn't work when put into another function. How would it even work anyways? Well, how would it? It couldn’t ever work in a global-scope function, that’s for sure, but it could — in principle — work in a nested function or a lambda under some reasonable conditions.
I've thought some time about the syntax, and parnet.return value
or parent.break label
(i.e. ⟨qualified-name⟩.⟨statement⟩ ⟨args⟩) felt the best, so I'm using. It is borrowed from object.BaseClass.method
syntax.
Example
Show, don’t tell:
int parent(int[] xss)
{
loop:
foreach (xs; xss)
{
foreach (x; xs)
{
void child(int y)
{
if (isPrime(y))
parent.break loop;
else if (y == 0xF00D)
parent.return 1234;
else if (y > 1_000_000)
parent.goto veryBig;
}
child(x);
higherOrderFunc(&child, x);
}
}
return 0;
veryBig:
writeln("wow!");
return 1;
}
The function child
must be declared in the loop. Declare it before and it does not see the label loop
(you could object to this). Declare it after and its name is not avaliable inside the loop (this has always been the case).
The reasonable conditions are: If you ever take the address of that function, it must be assigned to a scope
variable.
Otherwiese when the function is called, the stack frame it referred to might not exist anymore. It cannot be returned by the parent function. And it cannot be static
.
The only case without ⟨args⟩ is return
in a void
context. break
and continue
must use the labelled form.
The Juicy Part
If we go further and deprecate lambdas that start with a brace (i.e. auto lam = {}
lambdas, not auto lam = (){}
lambdas), we could change their semtantics: Every return
, break
, continue
, and goto
statement would be implicitly a parent.return
, parent.break
etc. targeting the nearest control-flow structure.
Together with some proposal to omit parentheses when the only (or last) argument is such a special lambda, it would allow for custom control-flow statements.
int parent() {
myControlFlowStmt(args) { lambda content; return 0; }
}
is lowered to
int parent() {
myControlFlowStmt(args, () { lambda content; parent.return 0; });
}
The lowering for foreach
does something similar, but there isn't really a way to utilize that functionality outside of it.
Corner Cases
If you have multiple nested functions, search without a leading dot is inside-out and outside-in with a leading dot:
void parent() // 1
{
void parent() // 2
{
void parent() // 3
{
void child()
{
return; // exits child
child.return; // (same) exits child
parent.return; // exits 3
parent.parent.return; // exits 2
parent.parent.parent.return; // exits 1
.parent.return; // exits 1
.parent.parent.return; // exits 2
.parent.parent.parent.return; // exits 3
.child.return; // error (child is not at global scope)
.parent.child.return; // error (child not directly under global .parent)
}
}
}
}
If you name the parents differently, of course you don't need all these; parent2.return
will suffice. Also note that nesting functions with the same name is legal in current D.
Who Is This For?
This looks like it asks for spaghetti code. But it's rather for being able to express something one cannot otherwise (easily) do. You would want that if you’re caught between code duplication and optimization.