VOTE
Gene Heskett
gene.heskett at verizon.net
Wed Dec 27 00:36:52 UTC 2006
On Tuesday 26 December 2006 15:10, Rick Stevens wrote:
>On Tue, 2006-12-26 at 14:07 -0500, Dmitriy Kropivnitskiy wrote:
>> Terry Polzin wrote:
>> > goto was also used in COBOL before "perform x thru y" became the
>> > common way of coding the procedure division. I think it's also used
>> > in fortran as well.
>>
>> There is actually a goto in many languages, including C, C++ and I
>> think Java, but if you use goto in your C program, your colleagues are
>> liable to break your arms and knee-caps, knock out your teeth and poke
>> out your eyes with a corkscrew and actually get away with it on
>> grounds of justifiable self defence.
>
Chuckle, even a bit of ROTFLMAO. Surely you jest, else we'd have the most
crippled up, blind and begging kernel developers you ever saw working on
just the kernel:
[root at coyote linux-2.6.20-rc1]# grep -R goto *|wc -l
43490
So apparently it is not as debasing a function to use as the preachers
here would have us believe.
>Well, if you read Kernighan & Ritchey's original "The C Programming
>Language" book, the "goto" was only put in because C doesn't provide a
>multi-level break statement. The only way out of that situation short
>of lots and lots of sentinel values is a goto. Of course, they also
>state that if you are more than four levels of indentation deep, you
>probably should think about splitting out a function or rethinking your
>logic.
Yes, I've read that, twice. I have both books.
>There are times where a "goto" is appropriate, but one should try to
>minimize its use--true in almost any procedural language. If you want
>to abuse the "goto", write in BASIC. :-)
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer rstevens at vitalstream.com -
>- VitalStream, Inc. http://www.vitalstream.com -
>- -
>- "I'd explain it to you, but your brain might explode." -
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above
message by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
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