Path: utzoo!utgpu!tmsoft!spectrix!yunexus!oz
From: oz@yunexus.UUCP (Ozan Yigit)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Put your code ... (was Re: gotos) [ptui]
Message-ID: <416@yunexus.UUCP>
Date: 20 Apr 88 04:49:50 GMT
References: <1988Apr11.201934.20594@utzoo.uucp> <451@goofy.megatest.UUCP> <1988Apr15.170753.867@utzoo.uucp> <2589@ttrdc.UUCP>
Reply-To: oz@yunexus.UUCP (Ozan Yigit)
Organization: York U. Computing Services - Magic Group
Lines: 41
Posted: Wed Apr 20 00:49:50 1988

In article <2589@ttrdc.UUCP> levy@ttrdc.UUCP (Daniel R. Levy) writes:
>In article <1988Apr15.170753.867@utzoo.uucp>, Henry Spencer writes:
># [Good stuff deleted... sigh...]

># Also left as an exercise for the reader is finding the bug in Knuth's
># hash-table-search code.  (He might possibly have corrected this in the
># reprint; my copy is the original Computing Surveys paper.)  The hazards
># of gotos doth make fools of the best of us...

>"Left as an exercise" (being implied in re the ways that Knuth's limited
>endorsement of goto can supposedly be refuted) sounds more like "I just don't
>want to bother showing why this is true, and anyone who doesn't agree is
>a lazy dolt."

	Actually, I think Henry really means coding errors in Knuth's 74
	article. [What is the bug Henry ?? It can't be infinite loop
	problem, as the hash technique he is using requires the number
	of entries be less than the size of the array.]

>Mr. Spencer, put your code where your mouth is.  For each goto example in
>Knuth, show us how you would code it to run equally efficiently without
>gotos.  Fair enough?

	Why are the smileys missing from your last paragraph ?? :-) Have
	you actually read that article?? (ACM Computing Surveys V.6 #4
	pp.  262-301 Dec. 74) Henry makes a good point indeed.. [Skip the
	Reader's Exercises part...:-)] I think the Knuth article may [or
	should] soon be of interest to Computer Language historians only.

	[In my opinion, a much more interesting perspective on GOTOs and
	their relation to procedures is found in Stele's "Debunking the
	EXPENSIVE PROCEDURE CALL Myth or, Procedure Call Implementations
	Considered Harmful or, LAMBDA: The Ultimate GOTO" ACM Conference
	Proceedings, pp. 153-162, 1977.]

oz
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