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From: ked@garnet.berkeley.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth)
Newsgroups: misc.misc,comp.misc
Subject: Re: The "evil" GOTO (Was: 25 Years of BASIC)
Keywords: Guinness, phlegm, mackerel, intestines
Message-ID: <24127@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 8 May 89 01:03:32 GMT
References: <1791@ubu.warwick.UUCP> <1436@onion.reading.ac.uk> <1814@ubu.warwick.UUCP> <11136@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <24047@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <11197@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
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Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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In article <11197@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) writes:
>In article <24047@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> ked@garnet.berkeley.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth) writes:

>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.

Please run this one past me again. Since I'm an historian and not a
programmer my mind must work differently. If you are doing it only once
and only micro-seconds are involved, the clearest form should prevail
(a subroutine rather than a goto). If you're going to do it a couple of
billion times and the function is a time pig, I can see sacrificing
readability to efficiency.

Of course, the logic stated in the previous paragraph would not hold if
(a) you write perfect code the first time and will never need to look
at it again; (b) only persons with your level of brilliance and your
programming experience ever look at your code.

Since your affiliaton is MIT, I must presume that both conditions hold.