VOTE

[Gene Heskett]

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)
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Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.