[COFF] Re: continue N. (Was: I can't drive 55...)

Regarding the general subject of using GOTOs: The first computer on which I did hands-on programming was an IBM S/360 model 25. It had 32K of memory available for user programs--that's both instructions and data. It executed code at about a 30 KIPS (yes--KILO instructions/second) rate. When you're programming on a machine that is that slow and with that limited an address space, every instruction counts. You couldn't afford either the space or the time to execute conditional tests just to avoid a GOTO. Programming using GOTOs doesn't necessarily mean you're writing rat's nest or spaghetti code. Yes, you can make a mess using GOTOs, and perhaps messy code is easier when GOTOs are allowed, but structured programming just for its own sake can lead to convoluted and messy program structure as well. What was rat's nest control flow with GOTOs can turn into rat's nest data flow of state variables. It's also worth noting that one of the main functions of a modern optimizing compiler is to take your nice, structured program and put all those rat's nest GOTOs (unconditional branch instructions) back so the thing will execute more quickly. -Paul W.