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From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: misc.misc,comp.misc
Subject: Re: The "evil" GOTO (Was: 25 Years of BASIC)
Message-ID: <8417@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 9 May 89 15:50:02 GMT
References: <1814@ubu.warwick.UUCP> <13113@lanl.gov> <2854@cps3xx.UUCP> <4383@ttidca.TTI.COM>
Reply-To: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Followup-To: misc.misc
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 31

In article <4383@ttidca.TTI.COM> hollombe@ttidcb.tti.com (The Polymath) writes:

>Where the break goes is _very_ specific.  It gets you out of the innermost
>containing loop (or switch).  Where a goto goes is _anywhere_ it damn well
>wants to.  I'd much rather match up a few braces (which, in _my_ coding
>standard, are aligned vertically on the page) than search through thousands
>of lines of code for a goto label.  Not to mention finding such a label in
>the middle of a program and wondering how many goto statements go to it
>and where they are.

Who uses paper anymore?  Any editor worth loading can find all the references
to a label faster than you can determine if a "break" is inside of a
switch or not (assuming you were bright enough to make the label a unique
piece of text).  I wish someone would re-think programming languages in
the context of intelligent editors.  I would really like to see "named"
enclosing braces like this:
if (foo) {:foo-cond
  while (bar < 2) {:bar-loop
        do_something();
	bar++;
  }:bar-loop
}:foo-cond

where bar-loop and foo-cond are arbitrary and optional text that must
match at the start and end.  Ordinarily I don't like extra verbosity
but sometimes I get the feeling I'm in a maze of twisty {}'s, that
all look alike.  This would also allow a reasonable diagnostic from
lint or the compiler when a brace is misplaced.  Can't we forget about
the days of paper-tape and punch cards?

Les Mikesell