Re: GOTO considered Satanic (was: Is there an ADA analogue to the C++ continue statement?)

[Alan Brain <abrain@cs.adfa.oz.au>]

Adam Beneschan wrote:
7
> Anyway, my point is: This is the 90's.  The battle has been won.  It's
> no longer necessary to take the attitude that whenever we see a GOTO,
> we should let out a shriek and beat the offending insect to death with
> a broom.  We can, and should, adopt a more moderate and less
> absolutist tone, one that says that GOTO's are generally unnecessary
> and should be avoided but may make code more readable on rare
> occasions.

I wish I could be as sanguine. I've seen some really bad spaghetti
written in modern languages.

The last time I was Software QA honcho on a multi-million line project,
I had to personally sign off on every GOTO used, as being In My
Professional Opinion, necessary.
Didn't have to do it often. I even had to encourage people to use them
on one occasion in a code walkthrough, when the non-GOTO solution was
really, really ugly.

But such a degree of Inertia/Red-Tape is a good way of keeping them to
an appropriate (ie Non-Zero but close to it) level.

-- 
Not the Australian Dairy Farmers Association,
   the Australian Defence Force Academy.
aebrain@dynamite.com.au abrain@cs.adfa.oz.au