Xref: utzoo misc.misc:6048 comp.misc:6031
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!lll-lcc!ncis.tis.llnl.gov!lll-winken!uunet!mcvax!hp4nl!botter!star.cs.vu.nl!roemer
From: roemer@cs.vu.nl (Roemer Lievaart)
Newsgroups: misc.misc,comp.misc
Subject: Re^2: The "evil" GOTO (Was: 25 Years of BASIC)
Message-ID: <2468@solo9.cs.vu.nl>
Date: 9 May 89 11:31:16 GMT
References: <905@twwells.uucp> <13301@lanl.gov>
Organization: V.U. Informatica, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Lines: 57

In article <13113@lanl.gov> jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles) writes:
>       if (cond1) {
>          [...A...]   /* lots of code */
>          goto LABEL;}
>       else if (cond2) {
> LABEL:   [...B...]   /* lots more code */
>       }
>

Ugh. I would choke on this several times if I would have to maintain this.
And I know what I am talking about, for I sometimes use goto's if
I haven't planned everything well in advance. But only in very
simple cases (like the one described).
When reading such code over again, I *always* end up confused, even a week
after I wrote it.

BTW. Why not:

	if (cond1 || cond2) {
	    if (cond1) {
		[...A...]
	    }
	    [...B...]
	}

Simple and neat.
And understandable: B is done if cond1 or if cond2, A only if cond1.
In the goto-version this is not clear immediately (to me it isn't!)

Of course, if cond1 has side-effects or is very complicated, one should read:

	
	bool condition1;

	condition1 = cond1;
	if (condition1 || cond2) {
	    if (condition1) {
		[...A...]
	    }
	    [...B...]
	}

People may throw up at throwing in extra variables like this. I used to.
Until I discovered that if you *name* them right, they really even make
things much *easier* to read. Variable naming is very important, especially
in cases like these.

The problem with goto's is:
When you don't use them often, you have troubles reading or maintaining
code which has them.
If you do use them often, you're very probably writing spaghetti code.

	-- Roemer
____________________________________________________________________________
Roemer B. Lievaart | 	LISP :
Amsterdam, Holland | 	a Lot of Irritating, Stupid Parenthesis
roemer@cs.vu.nl    |