The "goto-&NAME" form is quite different from the other forms of "goto". In fact, it isn't a goto in the normal sense at all, and doesn't have the stigma associated with other gotos. Instead, it substitutes a call to the named subroutine for the currently running subroutine. This is used by "AUTOLOAD" subroutines that wish to load another subroutine and then pretend that the other subroutine had been called in the first place (except that any modifications to "@_" in the current subroutine are propagated to the other subroutine.) After the "goto", not even "caller" will be able to tell that this routine was called first.