Re: Never use GOTO (was Is this the Free-Format that we asked for?)

[Scott Klement <klemscot@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 3 Nov 2000, Buck Calabro wrote:

> Jim,
> I bet you use LEAVE or ITER though.
> They are also branching instructions that leave a construct before all it's
> statements are executed.  It's the early exit that's the Bad Thing, not the
> spelling of the instruction.
> 

So are IF/ELSE/ENDIF, SELECT/WHEN/OTHER/ENDSL, DO/ENDDO, etc.  They're all
GOTO's. 

The difference is that IF/ENDIF are basically intuitive.  when you see
them, you know where they'll go if the condition proves true.  It just
"makes sense".

The same is true of ITER and LEAVE.   When you see them, you can pretty
much assume what they'll do.  You don't need to "track them down" (unless
you were foolish, and made your loop span 50+ lines of code, in which case
there is no hope for you).  

A GOTO is not intuitive.  90% of the time, its intrusive to the flow of
the program.

You know, the more I argue this point, the less I care if theres a goto in
the new language.  Sigh... I'm just weary of this whole topic.


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