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Discussion on: Is goto all that bad?

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polterguy profile image
Thomas Hansen •

Goto results in more complex code where it becomes more difficult to determine the potential execution paths of your code. Consider the following pseudo code

var foo = 0;
while(foo++ < 20) { /* ... Do stuff ... */}
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And compare it to the following.

var foo = 0;
start:
/* ... do stuff ... */
if (++foo < 20) { goto start; }
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Semantically they do the same thing, but one is more declarative in style. Then imagine having multiple layers of nested goto statements, etc - The thing pretty rapidly turns in "spaghetti" ...