Re: GOTO considered necessary (reworked)

["John G. Volan" <johnvolan@sprintmail.com>]

Robert Dewar wrote:
> 
> As for fall through, that is quite a bogus argument. If you map a FSM into
> a loop/case structure with an explicit state variable, then you have to be
> equally careful not to forget to modify the state variable. The error in one
> case is accidental transition to the following state, the error in the other
> is an infinite loop in one state -- not much to call there.
> 
> Of course in practice, one of the advantages of the goto model is that in
> some cases, it is quite natural to fall through to the following state:

[snip example of intentional fall-through]

Of course, what I was referring to was unintended or accidental
fall-through, particularly when introduced inadvertently during
maintenance. As you and others have pointed out, there are ways to
defensively guard against this whether programming a FSM using loop+case
or code+goto.

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