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From: Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: goto considered helpful (Was: question about linker)
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2024 15:27:22 +0200
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On Fri, 20 Dec 2024 13:52:13 +0100
Rosario19 <Ros@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> On Thu, 12 Dec 2024 14:44:54 +0200, Michael S  wrote:
> >On Wed, 11 Dec 2024 17:27:53 -0800
> >Keith Thompson > wrote:
> >  
> >> bart > writes:
> >> [...]  
> >> > My experience of multi-level break is that there are two main
> >> > use-cases:
> >> >
> >> >  * Used in the current loop only (not necessarily the innermost
> >> > to an observer). This is the most common
> >> >
> >> >  * Used to exit the outermost loop
> >> >
> >> > So to support these, named or even numbered loops are not
> >> > necessary. (Eg. I use 'exit' or 'exit all'.)    
> >> 
> >> I would oppose a change to C that only applied to innermost and
> >> outermost loops.  For one thing, I'm not aware of any other
> >> language that does this (except perhaps your unnamed one).  For
> >> another, it's easy enough to define a feature that handles any
> >> arbitrary nesting levels, by applying names (labels) to loops.
> >>  
> >
> >The better solution is education.
> >Convince teachers in unis and colleges that goto is *not* considered
> >harmful for this particular use case. Convince them to teach that   
> 
> goto is not harmful in every case, if the people that write it, indent
> that goto significally and have clear in mind and in the text, what
> that goto has to do
> 

I don't agree. Many sorts of goto are hard to understand for the reader
even when they are crystal clear to the writer [at the moment of
writing].
That applies to nearly all forward gotos into block and to nearly all
backward gotos. That is, there exists one sort of backward goto that I
find sufficiently understandable, but right now I am unable to
formalize its exact properties.
At large, Dijkstra is more right than wrong.

Of course, nothing of said above is relevant in context of gotos that
exit inner loops.