Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!purdue!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Oh noooooo!!
Message-ID: <10972@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 7 Sep 89 20:08:27 GMT
References: <7598@goofy.megatest.UUCP> <34566@apple.Apple.COM>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 33

In article <34566@apple.Apple.COM> ftanaka@Apple.COM (Forrest Tanaka) writes:
>I've been using gotos regularly in my C code for quite a few months--in one
>specific situation.  That situation is for error handling.

Your example could be generalized as follows:

char *
SomeFunction ()
    {
    char *Block0;
    char *Block1;
    char *Block2;

    if ((Block0 = AllocateMemory ()) == NULL)
        goto Abort0;
    if ((Block1 = AllocateMemory ()) == NULL)
        goto Abort1;
    if ((Block2 = AllocateMemory ()) == NULL)
        goto Abort2;
    return Block0;

Abort2:
    DeallocateMemory (Block1);
Abort1:
    DeallocateMemory (Block0);
Abort0:
    return (char *) null;
    }

which we ended up adopting extensively in the huge programming project
I occasionally mention.  It brings a high degree of order to the error
handling process, significantly improving the chances that all actions
get unwound properly on an abort.