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From: dennison@telepath.com
Subject: Software landmines (was: Why C++ is successful)
Date: 1998/08/14
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Date: 1998-08-14T00:00:00+00:00
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In article <dewar.903074236@merv>,
  dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wrote:
> Andy said
>
> <<Ahh... but have you ever found a "good" reason for using it? I have used
> goto in C and Pascal in certain rare cases, but I have always found clearer
> ways to code these cases in Ada.
> >>
>
> The two obvious uses vfor gotos in Ada are
>
> 1) to get a loop "continue" mechanism

for a simple loop, embedding the rest of the loop code in the body of the if
statement is clearer. For nested loops where you want to "continue" an outer
loop, I can see it. Not that I'd do such a thing. As a "goto-holic" who has
been straight for 10 years, the best bet is abstinence. One day at a time. :-)

> For example, I find the following perfectly clear:
>
>    <<sort>> for J in 1 .. N - 1 loop
>        if D (J) > D (J + 1) then
> 	  Swap (D(J), D(J + 1));
>           goto Sort;
>        end if;
>
> It is a little tricky to program this without the goto and not make it
> less clear. Actuallky many people who try this end up with a different
> algorithm (hint: the above sort is cubic, it is NOT a quadratic bubble sort
:-)

So the "average" poor maintainer schlep looks at this and thinks "is this
just a continue, or a complete restarting of the loop?" Oh yeah, that's
clear. %-(

If anyone does something this bizzare, they'd better put copious comments
around it explaining its semantics. Otherwise, its the software equivalent of
a land mine. Its just sitting there waiting for someone to touch it, then
...BOOM!

Very good counterexample to your own point.

T.E.D.

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