Re: GOTO in free form!

Hi Dave,

With the opcodes you mentioned you know where the control passes after the
statement executes. (The end of a loop with Iter, out of the loop with
leave,...).
But with a GOTO the next statement can be almost any where. There isn't
even a restriction that a GOTO must be within the same subroutine.

I have seen GOTO used (to me) logically and as a matter of fact I think it
was in a validation routine as well, but my opinion is that the rules for
a GOTO are too unrestrictive and programmers do take advantage of this.
Put in a quick fix with a GOTO, disregard program logic and add a GOTO to
circumvent the logic, etc.

IMHO GOTO opens the door to spaghetti code and as you mentioned usually is
used to bypass well thought out logic.

Rob
On 2012-09-10 7:18 AM, Dave wrote:

Found this in an rpg program :


A programme reads a primary file then does :

/free

if ..; //error detected
doErrorstuff;


/END-FREE
C GOTO FIN
/FREE

endif;

/end-free

The same is repeated wherever an error may occur.

What's wrong with this, apart from being ugly code? I was told that a
GOTO indicates poor analysis.

What's different with using a DO loop with ITER or LEAVE, a SUBR with LEAVESR?