[TUHS] I can't drive 55: "GOTO considered harmful" 55th anniversary

Luther Johnson luther at makerlisp.com
Fri Mar 10 09:31:25 AEST 2023


I agree, unless I use setjmp/longjmp for that. Besides error recovery, 
there are occasionally other times when we want to locally "return" to a 
common state and start "from the top" again. I find such uses very clear 
in their intent, and if commented well, not hard to follow at all - as 
long as there is not more than one "top" :)

On 03/09/2023 04:21 PM, Warner Losh wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 9, 2023, 4:18 PM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org 
> <mailto:tuhs at tuhs.org>> wrote:
>
>     GOTO is one of those paradoxical things where I would only trust
>     the most sophisticated engineer to know when it's acceptable to
>     use a GOTO but on the flip side would be suspicious of anyone
>     claiming to be an engineer that uses any amount of GOTOs...
>
>     Were any of the various GOTOs in languages ever meant to be any
>     more than providing the same level of control that branch
>     statements in assembly do?  Was there ever some vision anyone's
>     aware of concerning a sophisticated, dependable use of GOTOs? 
>     Since my first days poking around learning C GOTO has been
>     mentally filed away as an assembly vestige for folks in
>     transition, not a dependable construct in its own right.  Any
>     alternative camps out there?
>
>
>
> In C I use it all the time to do goto err for common error recovery 
> because C doesn't have anything better.
>
> Warner
>
>     - Matt G.
>
>     ------- Original Message -------
>     On Thursday, March 9th, 2023 at 3:01 PM, Steffen Nurpmeso
>     <steffen at sdaoden.eu <mailto:steffen at sdaoden.eu>> wrote:
>
>
>     > I wonder if Pink Floyd's Summer68 maybe refers to this.
>     > Other than that i am addicted and could not live without it.
>     > The other (terrible) song is from 1984 (east southern US).
>     >
>     > --steffen
>     > |
>     > |Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear,
>     > |der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one
>     > |einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off
>     > |(By Robert Gernhardt)
>

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