Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!amdahl!pyramid!voder!kontron!optilink!cramer
From: cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: gotos
Message-ID: <2009@optilink.UUCP>
Date: 8 Apr 88 17:16:36 GMT
References: <2571@cognos.UUCP>, <77200029@uiucdcsp> <1988Apr5.213343.1528@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA
Lines: 22

> > Sometimes, gotos are perfectly justifiable because they vastly
> > simplify and clarify you code.
> 
> And once in a long while, there is no better way.  A loooong while.
> If I were running a software house, I'd be tempted to say that using
> a goto -- except in fixing a program that already uses them -- means
> having $50 docked from your pay.  It's not *forbidden*, you understand,
> it's just that you have to want it really badly!
> -- 
> "Noalias must go.  This is           |  Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
> non-negotiable."  --DMR              | {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,utai}!utzoo!henry

Exactly the right approach.  The last project I supervised, the engineers
that worked for me would occasionally try to justify a goto.  Every single
time, I demonstrated that the worst they were out was an automatic variable
and maybe a do...while construct -- usually the do...while loop and an
appropriate automatic variable were already there.

I accept the remote possibility that goto might be appropriate somewhere --
just as I accept the remote possibility that leprechauns exist, and we've
just never found them.

Clayton E. Cramer