Goto [Was Re: Chown ???]

[Rick Stevens]

Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-04-10 at 10:32 -0500, Dave Ihnat wrote:
>> The purpose of deprecating use of goto was to avoid the spaghetti code
>> that was so prevalent, especially in C.
> 
> <Bzzzt>. Close but no cigar. The problems with Goto were pointed out by
> Dijkstra in his famous 1968 letter to CACM "Go To Statement Considered
> Harmful", which is several years before C appeared on the scene. (Note
> also Knuth's 1974 rebuttal to Dijkstra "Structured Programming with Goto
> Statements"; old controversies never die, they just fade away).
> 
> C programmers are not notable users of goto's in my experience. In fact
> the use of goto is pretty unusual (unless you consider break and
> continue to be disguised goto's).
> 
> Don't worry, you can still write illegible code without using any
> goto's.

Actually, K&R sanctify the use of GOTOs since "there's no multi-level 
break defined in C." or words to that extent.
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