10 Mar
2023
10 Mar
'23
12:44 a.m.
This blog post compares the clarity of a number of programs written
with goto vs. with other control flow methods:
https://blog.joren.ga/gotophobia-harmful
Knuth’s “Structured Programming with go to Statements” argues that we
eventually missed the main point of structured programming by focusing too
much on goto. https://pic.plover.com/knuth-GOTO.pdf
Error handling (especially in loops or when releasing resources in non-RAII
languages) and implementing state machines are commonly brought up as cases
where goto is more fitting than common “structured” control flow
statements. I think some newer languages like Zig extend the “break”
mechanism to let you break to a label, so that sort of covers the first
case.
Josh