3.5. Summary
This chapter has described the entire range of control of flow available
in C. The only areas that cause even moderate surprise are the way in which
cases in a switch statement are not mutually exclusive, and the fact that
goto cannot transfer control to any function except the one that is
currently active. None of this is intellectually deep and it has never been
known to cause problems either to beginners or programmers experienced in
other languages.
The logical expressions all give integral results. This is perhaps
slightly unusual, but once again takes very little time to learn.
Probably the most surprising part about the whole chapter will have been
to learn of the conditional and comma operators. A strong case could be
made for the abolition of the conditional operator, were it not for
compatibility with existing code, but the comma operator does have
important uses, especially for automatic generators of C programs.
The Standard has not had much effect on the contents of this chapter.
Prospective users of C should ensure that they are completely familiar with
all of the topics discussed here (except the conditional and comma
operators). They are essential to the practical use of the language, and
none of the material is hard.
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