From: John Joyce <dangerwillrobinsondanger@...>
Date: 2007-07-07T06:06:49+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby case statement


On Jul 6, 2007, at 4:19 AM, Robert Klemme wrote:

> 2007/7/6, tobyclemson@gmail.com <tobyclemson@gmail.com>:
>> Basically I had a situation where dependent on the formatting of a
>> block of text, different actions had to be carried out but some
>> actions were common to each of the formattings whereas others weren't
>> so I really wanted to be able to apply the bits that were specific to
>> say the type 1 format first and then follow down into the actions
>> common to both type 1 and type 2 such as is the case in other
>> languages when you don't 'break' out of each 'case' clause. I
>> understand now that all 'case' clauses in ruby automatically 'break'
>> when they finish but I was wondering whether there was a way around
>> that such as in my code example. It appears though that in my code
>> block, the first 'when' clause fulfilling the condition is executed
>> and then the 'case' is exited. I wanted to know whether there was a
>> way to stop the 'case' exiting so that it continues and carries out
>> the actions in the next 'when' clause fulfilling the condition.  
>> And if
>> there isn't a way to do this, what is the best way to achieve the
>> functionality I am trying to obtain.
>
> I do not know how complex your operations are. From what you write I
> guess there could be multiple actions and they could be complex. Also,
> there might be numerous formats - if not today then maybe in a later
> stage. Going from there the solution I'd probably favor is a class
> hierarchy of formatters.  That way you can define some basic
> formatting functionality in methods in the base class and use those
> methods from all sub class methods.
>
> You then only need to map your format code in some way to the name of
> a specific formatter class and send the request off to that to get
> your specific formatting.  For the mapping you can use various
> mechanisms, the easiest probably being the class name of the
> formatter.  But you can as well use some specific mapping using a
> Hash.  There are other methods as well.
>
> Kind regards
>
> robert
>
you mean you want it to fall through like in C?