Re: Why was GOTO removed from /free?

[Scott Klement <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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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