Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!taumet!steve
From: steve@taumet.com (Stephen Clamage)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Usage of goto's
Message-ID: <465@taumet.com>
Date: 29 Sep 90 17:21:11 GMT
References: <1990Sep28.121230.17767@NCoast.ORG>
Organization: Taumetric Corporation, San Diego
Lines: 23

ramsey@NCoast.ORG (Cedric Ramsey) writes:

|Hello once again peoplekind. I have a question about goto's. We all
|know that there usage is taboo in any language but what better way 
|do we have to implement finite state machines. A switch statement ?
|All a switch statement is a goto statement, internally that is. So
|then, maybe it is okay to implement goto's for NFA's, DFA's, and
|transition diagrams.

Probably the best discussions on this topic were published in
	ACM Computing Surveys
	Vol 6, No 4, December 1974
If you have access to a CS library, go look up this volume.  In one
paper, Niklaus Wirth shows why goto's are unnecessary, and in another
Donald Knuth shows why "absolutely no goto's" is a needlessly harsh
dictum.

I strongly recommend that anyone tempted to comment on goto usage
read these papers first.  (They total more than 50 6"x9" pages.
I cannot provide copies, so please don't ask.)
-- 

Steve Clamage, TauMetric Corp, steve@taumet.com