A case against the GOTO

ABSTRACT

It has been proposed, by E. W. Dijkstra and others, that the goto statement in programming language is a principal culprit in programs which are difficult to understand, modify, and debug. More correctly, the argument is that it is possible to use the goto to synthesize program structures with these undesirable properties. Not all uses of the goto are to be considered harmful; however, it is further argued that the “good” uses of the gotofall into one of a small number of specific cases which may be handled by specific language constructs. This paper summarizes the arguments in favor of eliminating the goto statement and some of the theoretical and practical implications of the proposal.

REFERENCES

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.3 Language Constructs and Features
          Subjects: Control structures

General Terms:
Languages

Keywords:
Goto-less programming, Programming, Programming languages, Structured programming