Costello, Roger L. scripsit:
> Case analyses is essentially using examples to define a function (or
> in the case of a specification to specify a behavior).
"Examples" usually means just a subset of the possible cases, whereas
"case analysis" involves specifying how to handle _every_ case.
Conflating them just produces confusion.
> "Programs that avoid case analyses are clearer and simpler than those
> that use case analyses."
>
> Professor Richard Bird made that surprising statement in his book,
> Introduction to Functional Programming.
I can't find it using Amazon search within the book. However, I think the
sense of "case analysis" in that book opposes it to "pattern matching",
which is a distinction that is only relevant to specific programming
languages that provide pattern matching. The underlying implementation
is by an exhaustive set of cases anyway.
--
Even a refrigerator can conform to the XML John Cowan
Infoset, as long as it has a door sticker
saying "No information items inside". http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
--Eve Maler
