On Mon, 2008-02-11 at 11:49 +0900, Adrian Chadd wrote: > On Mon, Feb 11, 2008, Amos Jeffries wrote: > > > > I end up with -one- exit location in the function and I don't have to > > > bum around using extra functions or massively nested conditional > > > constructs to achieve it. In fact, I've used goto in a few places to > > > tidy up the code.. > > > > If you need to use it to clean up a single function. It's an obvious sign > > that the function is too complicated. In 10 years of writing complicated > > code I have yet to see a single place where it is actually required. > > Required? No. Useful? Yes. > > Too often I've seen people push the "cleanup" stuff into another function, > thinking that bit of refactoring was a good idea. Thing is, if they didn't > document that the function is private just for another function, some other > coder will come along later, see the function, and think its fine for them > to use (solving their immediate problem.) This leads to badness in the > future. > > It took me quite a while to get over the "goto is evil, never ever use it" > koolaid. But then, in C++, you should be using exceptions, not weird > flow control tricks. :)
I quite like the very structured way of using goto: that the linux kernel encourages. Its certainly cleaner the way they do it than reused helper functions - you need a bazjillion little functions to clean up nested resources properly, and you end up with two sets: a tonne of little 'call X cleanup, then chain to Y the remaining things to cleanup' functions. And secondly, all the actual X cleanup functions. -Rob -- GPG key available at: <http://www.robertcollins.net/keys.txt>.
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