(The American misspelling "fall thru" is also common) 1. To exit a loop by exhaustion, i.e. by having fulfilled its exit condition rather than via a break or exception condition that exits from the middle of it. This usage appears to be *really* old, dating from the 1940s and 1950s. 2. To fail a test that would have passed control to a subroutine or some other distant portion of code. 3. In C, "fall-through" occurs when the flow of execution in a ef="module.php?name=Lexikon&file=search&eid=1&query=switch statement">switch statement reaches a "case" label other than by jumping there from the switch header, passing a point where one would normally expect to find a "break". A trivial example: switch (colour) { case GReeN: do_green() break case PINK: do_pink() /* FALL THROUGH */ case ReD: do_red() break default: do_blue() break } Theeffect of the above code is to "do_green()" when colour is "GReeN", "do_red()" when colour is "ReD", "do_blue()" on any other colour other than "PINK", and (and this is the important part) "do_pink()" *and then* "do_red()" when colour is "PINK". Fall-through is ef="module.php?name=Lexikon&file=search&eid=1&query=considered harmful">considered harmful by some, though there are contexts (such as the coding of state machines) in which it is natural it is generally considered good practice to include a comment highlighting the fall-through where one would normally expect a break. See also ef="module.php?name=Lexikon&file=search&eid=1&query=Duff' s Device">Duff' s Device.
