Language mavens: Is there a programming with "if then else ENDIF" syntax?

[Dotan Cohen]

2009/11/16 Steve Ferg <steve.ferg.bitbucket at gmail.com>:
> This is a question for the language mavens that I know hang out here.
> It is not Python related, except that recent comparisons of Python to
> Google's new Go language brought it to mind.
>
> NOTE that this is *not* a suggestion to change Python.  I like Python
> just the way it is.  I'm just curious about language design.
>
> For a long time I've wondered why languages still use blocks
> (delimited by do/end, begin/end, { } , etc.) in ifThenElse statements.
>
> I've often thought that a language with this kind of block-free syntax
> would be nice and intuitive:
>
>    if <condition> then
>        do stuff
>    elif <condition> then
>        do stuff
>    else
>        do stuff
>    endif
>
> Note that you do not need block delimiters.
>
> Obviously, you could make a more Pythonesque syntax by using a colon
> rather then "then" for the condition terminator.  You could make it
> more PL/I-like by using "do", etc.
>
> You can write shell scripts using if ... fi, but other than that I
> don't recall a language with this kind of syntax.
>
> Does anybody know a language with this kind of syntax for
> ifThenElseEndif?
>

PHP has exactly this:

if (condition) {
   // stuff
} elseif (otherContition) {
  // otherStuff
} elseif (yetAnotherCondition) {
  // yetOtherStuff
}


Furthermore, PHP has the switch statement:
http://php.net/manual/en/control-structures.switch.php

switch ($i) {
    case 0:
        echo "i equals 0";
        break;
    case 1:
        echo "i equals 1";
        break;
    case 2:
        echo "i equals 2";
        break;
}

The break commands end the switch, and they can be removed to have
multiple matches perform multiple functions.


> Is there any particular reason why this might be a *bad* language-
> design idea?

It is about as far from OO as one could get. Whether or not that is
"bad" depends on the use case.


-- 
Dotan Cohen

http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il