There are some (rare) cases where goto can actually improve readability. In fact, the documentation you linked to lists two examples: A common use of goto is to transfer control to a specific switch-case label or the default label in a switch statement. The goto statement is also useful to get out of deeply nested … Read more
Absolutely! There is a project called Summer of Goto that allows you use JavaScript at its fullest potential and will revolutionize the way you can write your code. This JavaScript preprocessing tool allows you to create a label and then goto it using this syntax: [lbl] <label-name> goto <label-name> For example, the example in the … Read more
You could use a labeled BREAK statement: search: for (i = 0; i < arrayOfInts.length; i++) { for (j = 0; j < arrayOfInts[i].length; j++) { if (arrayOfInts[i][j] == searchfor) { foundIt = true; break search; } } } However, in properly designed code, you shouldn’t need GOTO functionality.
If you are using it to skip part of a large script for debugging (see Karl Nicoll’s comment), then if false could be a good option (not sure if “false” is always available, for me it is in /bin/false): # … Code I want to run here … if false; then # … Code I … Read more
The target of a CALL or GOTO should never be inside a block statement within parentheses. It can be done, but as you see, the results are probably not going to be what you want. The entire IF (…) ELSE (…) construct is parsed and loaded into memory before any of it is processed. In … Read more
Warning: This answer pertains to C++ only; the rules are quite different in C. Won’t x be leaked? No, absolutely not. It is a myth that goto is some low-level construct that allows you to override C++’s built-in scoping mechanisms. (If anything, it’s longjmp that may be prone to this.) Consider the following mechanics that … Read more
EDIT: How bad is the goto statement really, and why? It depends on the exact situation. I can’t remember any time where I found it made the code more readable than refactoring. It also depends on your personal view of readability – some people dislike it more than others, as is clear from the other … Read more
Because they lead to spaghetti code. In the past, programming languages didn’t have while loops, if statements, etc., and programmers used goto to make up the logic of their programs. It lead to an unmaintainable mess. That’s why the CS gods created methods, conditionals and loops. Structured programming was a revolution at the time. goto’s … Read more
FWIF, I find the error handling idiom you gave in the question’s example to be more readable and easier to understand than any of the alternatives given in the answers so far. While goto is a bad idea in general, it can be useful for error handling when done in a simple and uniform manner. … Read more
Everybody who is anti-goto cites, directly or indirectly, Edsger Dijkstra’s GoTo Considered Harmful article to substantiate their position. Too bad Dijkstra’s article has virtually nothing to do with the way goto statements are used these days and thus what the article says has little to no applicability to the modern programming scene. The goto-less meme … Read more