[Oberon] WITH considered harmful

[Paul Reed]

> Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2011 19:06:14 -0000
> From: "Bob Walkden" <bob at web-options.com>
...
 the Modula-2 WITH statement, which was a way to avoid
> writing the record name against every component of the record.
>
> eg VAR r: RECORD
> 		a,b : CARDINAL
> 	END
> ...
> WITH r DO
> 	a := b
> END
> instead of R.a := R.b;

This reminds me of an experience I had working on a large Delphi Pascal
codebase a few years ago, where previous programmers had knocked
themselves out using this form of WITH liberally to save typing at the
expense of clarity.

However, it was pointed out to me that it's actually worse than the
clarity issue; in a statement block like:

  WITH r, s, t DO
    ...
  END

(which is allowed in Delphi), the whole *meaning* of the statement block
might change if somebody adds a field to one of the record definitions
which happens to coincide with an already-used field in one of the other
records in the WITH.

I instituted a(n only slightly tongue-in-cheek) rule that no-one was
allowed to check any unit back into the source-code control system unless
they had removed several WITH statements.