goto... Who uses it?

[Septimus Hedgehog]

Fortran IV made extensive use of them. I used to love them at the time. Since then, I've never used them. Perhaps they do have a use and if teams that write compilers put them in then whose to argue for and against?

If there is one thing more dangerous than getting between a bear and her cubs it's getting between my wife and her chocolate.

[Brisingr Aerowing]

I only use it in shell scripts/batch files, and I am working on setting up Python as my default Windows shell system. That will take some work, but I think it will be worth it!

Bob Dole

The internet is a great way to get on the net.

:doh: 2.0.82.7292 SP6a

[C P User 3]

None dare mention the fact that "break" and "goto" are really the same thing

[Member 4608898]

I hate being restricted by programming standards that explicitly say "you should not use gotos". What is the point of using a language that has gotos and not being allowed to use them. It is like someone giving you an ornamental chocolate and your mum telling you that you aren't allowed to eat it because it looks pretty. Why did they give it to us if we weren't meant to eat it. Why does a language have gotos if we are not allowed to use them.:confused: When I was in airlines, the technical manager said that if anyone wanted to use gotos, he wanted a writeup of reasons. Now here was a challenge: all I had to do was reproduce the essay "structured programming using gotos" which I wrote when I was in Uni (1976), with snippets of how much simpler the code was with gotos than without. It was about 3 pages. The goto restriction was lifted for me and no one ever questioned it. The same thing happened when I was in medical. Guess they had never dealt with a real computer scientist before. Everyone else was an ex engineer, astronomer, mathematician or physicist. They just read about programming concepts: they never had to do the research or write up essays on simple, everyday things like use of do-while-false loops or indentation styles.

[Member 4608898]

I try to squeeze at least one in at every site where I've worked, just to prove a point (the points being, nobody reads the programming standards and not many people actually read code). I've succeeded in 6 out of 9.

[jschell]

Collin Jasnoch wrote:

There is no "correct" usage of it in modern high level languages

I doubt the the absoluteness of that statement. It is likely there are few cases but even one refutes your statement.

[jschell]

dusty_dex wrote:

Exception handling will usually bog down the handled block of code.

If that is a reference to performance then as stated it isn't true.

[Jan Steyn]

An error condition returns the same value as a non-error condition? Many hamsters are dying because of that.

[Chris Maunder]

Oops. Typo.

cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP

[Kyudos]

Have you ever tried to "unuse" GOTO in optimized F77? The logic required to replicate the program flow without it is often horrendous and generally not worth the effort if the original code works...

[YvesDaoust]

Blame has been put on the goto statement by a very famous article. In the old days of FORTRAN, with its old fashioned control statements, including conditional, assigned and computed goto's, or in early versions of the Basic language with its goto/gosub mechanisms, you had little other option to control the flow of execution than branching to numeric labels. Writing clean code was indeed a challenge, as it was hard to make the structure of the code apparent. Things have changed a lot thanks to structured languages so that pinches of goto's every here and there are quite acceptable, and possibly more advisable than some contortions used to avoid them at all costs. My favorite usage is when implementing state machines, every state being represented by a jump label and the decision-making block of code following it, which includes a number of explicit branches to other states. Such coding can involve tenths of goto's, while remaining crystal clear readable.

[Brady Kelly]

Hasn't T-SQL had try-catch since 2005?

[Fred Flams]

I'm still using GOTOs, not in my C# / JAVA / C++ code but in my SQL Code. It is still very usefull in SQL for error handling, MS introduced the BEGIN/END TRY/CATCH structure but it is not portable on version of SQL older than 2005 and it is absolutely not portable "as is" on another SQL Engine and most of the customers I've worked for have that mandatory requirement to be able to switch engine as they see fit (even if 90% of them will never take that step and stick to MS SQL Server).

[Tieske8]

Goto is a perfectly well usable statement. It's been considered a bad practice from the times people tended to write spaghetti code by using only goto for flow control in their code. It is a tool, and if you use it right, it will help you write simple and maintainable code. But as with any tool, if you use it in a bad way, you get what you deserve. If I have nested code, if-then, several levels deep, I prefer goto. Much cleaner. Writing a function that throws the same exception in 10 places (example elsewhere in this discussion, with the critique he should have used exceptions) is more complex than the provided sample with the gotos (which I like). Could have done it myself. As a note; Lua 5.2 (released 2012) got the goto statement as a new enhancement to the language (so after 20 years of Lua)

Cigarettes are a lot like hamsters. Perfectly harmless, until you put it in your mouth and light it on fire.

[Super Lloyd]

I am not afraid to say I used it at least 4 or 5 times! (in the last 10 years!...) Even once recently! I hate the mindless peer pressure against it, use it even it's ugly if you like! Use whatever makes your code more beautiful! ^^ Just so you know, the (mindless violent) hate against it is based on the following argument: "it's not maintainable" i.e. "it break the flow of the code which should be otherwise obvious" That much is true, long methods with goto label hidden 300 line below are big traps. But this is true of 300 lines method without goto too!!! So, shortly, use it if it's the shorter more expressive solution. If someone doesn't like it, suggest them to fix the code. And choose the most expressive readable code between theirs and yours after that! ;P Anyway, when one use goto? Err... truthfully only one C# exemple comes to my mind (apart switch): how to break out simple of multiple nest loop

for ()
for(..)
for(..)
{
if(condition)
goto exit_loop;
}
exit_loop:;

Just so you know, a typical C goto will be for clean up, as in

if (success1) {...}
else goto failure
If (sucess2) { ...}
goto failure
...
return;
failure:

but in C# this is more nicely expressed with try {} catch {} finally {} which doesn't need any goto

My programming get away... The Blog... DirectX for WinRT/C# since 2013! Taking over the world since 1371!

[Super Lloyd]

I hate all those anti-goto people! :mad:

My programming get away... The Blog... DirectX for WinRT/C# since 2013! Taking over the world since 1371!

[Super Lloyd]

you're right, but bad example! ^^

void Test()
{
while (true)
{
string str = "Something";

            if (str.Length != 10)
            {
                continue;
            }
           blabla();

        }
    }

    void Test2() {
        while (true)
        {
            string str = "Something";

            if (str.Length != 10)
            {
                goto next;
            }
           blabla();

next:;
}
}

My programming get away... The Blog... DirectX for WinRT/C# since 2013! Taking over the world since 1371!

[JohnLBevan]

In my early days I used them a lot - then I discovered methods and functions and stopped using them. The only exceptions are certain languages which require goto (e.g. VBScript/VBA error handling - on error goto 0). In studying computer science I was also told that there was one valid known use of a goto statement, which was in a washing machine with an 8 bit processor where the use of the goto statement allowed for a saving on hardware costs. Sadly I can't remember the detail / can't find more info online.

[BobJanova]

That ternary cannot throw. You're thinking of Java and its .equals nonsense. == won't throw for a null.

[Rob Grainger]

DanielSheets wrote:

It can make for cleaner code if used correctly.

Post an example then, or it isn't so. I see you did, in another sub-thread, see my response there for a cleaner equivalent.