10 Mar
2023
10 Mar
'23
4:37 p.m.
From: "Ronald Natalie"
Multilevel breaks are as bad as goto with regard to
structure violation.
In a way, you are right. There isn't really much difference between:
for (mumble) {
for (foobar) {
do some stuff
break-2;
}
}
and:
for (mumble) {
for (foobar) {
do some stuff
goto all_loops_done;
}
}
all_loops_done:
The former is basically just 'syntactic sugar' for the latter.
I think the point is that goto's aren't necessarily _always_ bad, in and of
themselves; it's _how_, _where_ and _why_ one uses them. If one uses goto's
in a _structured_ way (oxymoronic as that sounds), to get around things that
are lacking in the language's flow-control, they're probably fine.
Then, of course, one gets into the usual shrubbery of 'but suppose someone
uses them in a way that's _not_ structured?' There's no fixing stupid, is
my
response. Nested 'if/then/else' can be used to write comletely
incomprehensible code (I have an amusing story about that) - but that's not
an argument against nested 'if/then/else'.
As I've said before, the best sculpting tools in the world won't make a great
sculptor out of a ham-handed bozo.
Noel