On Tuesday 26 December 2006 15:10, Rick Stevens wrote:
On Tue, 2006-12-26 at 14:07 -0500, Dmitriy Kropivnitskiy wrote:
> Terry Polzin wrote:
> > goto was also used in COBOL before "perform x thru y" became the
> > common way of coding the procedure division. I think it's also used
> > in fortran as well.
>
> There is actually a goto in many languages, including C, C++ and I
> think Java, but if you use goto in your C program, your colleagues are
> liable to break your arms and knee-caps, knock out your teeth and poke
> out your eyes with a corkscrew and actually get away with it on
> grounds of justifiable self defence.
Chuckle, even a bit of ROTFLMAO. Surely you jest, else we'd have the most
crippled up, blind and begging kernel developers you ever saw working on
just the kernel:
[root@coyote linux-2.6.20-rc1]# grep -R goto *|wc -l
43490
So apparently it is not as debasing a function to use as the preachers
here would have us believe.
Well, if you read Kernighan & Ritchey's original "The C
Programming
Language" book, the "goto" was only put in because C doesn't provide a
multi-level break statement. The only way out of that situation short
of lots and lots of sentinel values is a goto. Of course, they also
state that if you are more than four levels of indentation deep, you
probably should think about splitting out a function or rethinking your
logic.
Yes, I've read that, twice. I have both books.
There are times where a "goto" is appropriate, but one
should try to
minimize its use--true in almost any procedural language. If you want
to abuse the "goto", write in BASIC. :-)
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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer rstevens(a)vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.
http://www.vitalstream.com -
- -
- "I'd explain it to you, but your brain might explode." -
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--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
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Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.