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.