OpenEuphoria

Re: Good Use of GOTO

• Posted by c.k.lester <euphoric at ckles??r.com> Jun 06, 2008
• 859 views

Michael J. Sabal wrote:
> c.k.lester wrote:
> >    continue, exit, retry, etc...
> I thought the whole point of introducing GOTO was so as not to litter the 
> language with all these extra keywords.  I vote to keep GOTO and get rid
> of all the other words (except exit, for legacy's sake).

GOTO is a poor substitute for these other words.

for t=1 to 10 next
  if a then
    continue
  else
    -- code
  end if
end for

In the above very simple example, which nobody should ever use but it is
analogous to something more complicated, the continue tells the interpreter
to resume the loop... meaning, it knows to increment t then goto the top and
resume execution.

How would you use GOTO there?

for t=1 to 10 next
  if a then
    goto...?
  else
    -- code
  end if
end for

In all the cases of continue, retry, exit, the interpreter and programmer
are constantly aware of code structure and flow. With GOTO, you have to
resort to contortions to do the same thing that these simple words allow.

In the example above, no matter where you GOTO, your loop var will not
increment... without extra [cumbersome] code.