From: Sean O'Dell <sean@...>
Date: 2002-06-06T13:22:14+09:00
Subject: Re: Pascal-like 'with' statement?

Chris Morris wrote:

>>That's something I would LOVE to see added.
>>
> 
> FWIW, many Delphi programmers discourage the use of with -- although that
> may be in part to limitations of previous versions of the debugger (with
> Delphi 5, you can mouse over a variable and get a pop-up watch, but not on
> variables that resolve to the obj of the with block). Another reason is that
> it can make the code less readable:
> 
> - if the block under the with is too long
> - if multiple items are used in the with block, it can be confusing which
> one is being referenced
> 
> // this is legal
> with AObj, BObj do
> begin
>   MemberA := 'x';
>   MemberB := 'c';
> end;
> 
> .. does MemberB belong to BObj, does MemberA belong to AObj? There's no way
> to know just by looking at this block.

I've never heard of its use discouraged, but then Pascal is hardly my 
religion.  :-)  When you have a lot of operations to perform on a single 
object in sequence, it's quite handy.

I didn't know the syntax you show is legal.  Seems foolish that they 
allowed such a thing.  I would NOT recommend that *ahem* feature find 
its way into Ruby.

	Sean