Goto considered harmful

From CSSEMediaWiki
(Difference between revisions)
Jump to: navigation, search
(Added relevant link.)
Line 10: Line 10:
 
* [[Design maxims]]
 
* [[Design maxims]]
 
* [[Spaghetti code]]
 
* [[Spaghetti code]]
 +
 +
== Links ==
 +
[http://userweb.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd02xx/EWD215.PDF| Go To Statement Considered Harmful, E. Dijkstra]

Revision as of 03:37, 16 July 2010

This is not particularly relevant to higher level languages such as Java which do not have goto statements (note that in Java "goto" is a reserved keyword but is not used), but in low level languages such as Fortran and C goto statements are considered bad practice.

This is because, simply put, goto statements make the behaviour of a program harder to understand. To quote Dijkstra "...the quality of programmers is a decreasing function of the density of go to statements in the programs they produce." The harder a program is the understand, the harder it is to maintain.

The excessive use of goto statements can use to very convoluted code with a complicated flow of control. Such code is sometimes called Spaghetti code

In most cases where it becomes tempting to use a goto statement a more elegant solution is to break the method in question into several submethods.

See also

Links

Go To Statement Considered Harmful, E. Dijkstra

Personal tools