Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!athena.mit.edu!jik
From: jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens)
Newsgroups: misc.misc,comp.misc
Subject: Re: The "evil" GOTO (Was: 25 Years of BASIC)
Keywords: Guinness, phlegm, mackerel, intestines
Message-ID: <11197@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Date: 7 May 89 23:32:53 GMT
References: <1791@ubu.warwick.UUCP> <1436@onion.reading.ac.uk> <1814@ubu.warwick.UUCP> <11136@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <24047@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lines: 33
Xref: utzoo misc.misc:5996 comp.misc:5993

In article <24047@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> ked@garnet.berkeley.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth) writes:
>First, your C compiler must have a rather weird stdio library if it
>requires you to to do explicit flushing.

Some stdio libraries do not flush stdout unless you print a newline,
and when you are prompting for input you usually do not follow the
prompt with a newline.

Further, I flushed stdin because I wanted to be consistent :-) -- it
probably wan't necessary.

>Second, why not
>
> ...
>
>as a subroutine?

My point was not that the code segment I posted was the *best* way to
do the job, but rather that it was one way to do it that did not
require goto's.  You have shown another way.

As for why not as a subroutine, if you're only doing it once then
using a subroutine is a speed hit that you don't need (a small speed
hit, granted, but a speed hit nevertheless :-).  Inlining makes it run
faster.

You're suggestion is similar to the suggestion someone else posted of
using break to exit the loop when valid input was obtained.

Jonathan Kamens			              USnail:
MIT Project Athena				410 Memorial Drive, No. 223F
jik@Athena.MIT.EDU				Cambridge, MA 02139-4318
Office: 617-253-4261			      Home: 617-225-8218