Re: Why was GOTO removed from /free?

My personal opinion is that GOTO is a bad thing to have in a modern language. I agree with the plethora of papers and articles that have said this.

I do see your point to a degree. It's possible to use GOTO in a way that isn't too bad... the problem is that it always starts out that innocently, but then gets overused and leads to a mess. Usually, at best, the code with the goto is "just as clean as" code without the goto... IMHO, it's never actually BETTER with the goto. Not having it forces people to structure their code around the way the program is SUPPOSED to flow, and leads to better code in the long run.

Just my opinion.

Regarding it being "removed" from /free -- it wasn't removed, because it was never in /free. The fixed format GOTO is still there, and can still be used as always.

I have been writing GOTO-free RPG code now for 15 years (I started in RPG/400) and at first it was really hard to get the hang of, and I felt as you do that it was cumbersome and that I was avoiding it for no good reason. But after doing it for awhile I found the gotoless code nicer. Now, after so long, I would never even consider going back.

Also, RPG *does* support exceptions, although I wish IBM would make them simpler to use -- but I do use those as well.


john e wrote:

Without giving something back...?

For clean error handling "goto" is often the best choice in a classic language (yes RPG is still classic, like C).

What problem has been solved now by just removing goto from RPG as we don't have exception handling in RPG as we have in C++ or Java?


http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2009/04/27/using-goto-for-error-handling-in-c/

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