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in reply to GOTO considered (a necessary) evil?

after reading this thread and re-reading Would you use 'goto' here?, i'm beginning to think there should be optional warnings for goto usage. perhaps use warnings 'goto'; could warn on goto LABEL and goto EXPR, but pass goto &NAME.

of course, this shouldn't be implemented without an agreement from the perl community that goto in the traditional sense should someday be deprecated.

thoughts?

~Particle *accelerates*

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Re: GOTO considered (a necessary) evil?
by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Jul 15, 2002 at 16:14 UTC
    i'm beginning to think there should be optional warnings for goto usage. perhaps use warnings 'goto'; could warn on goto LABEL and goto EXPR, but pass goto &NAME.
    I think that is a very bad idea. Warnings are there to prevent programmers from making accidental mistakes. Warnings are done if variables have unexpected values (comparing integers with ==, adding undefined values, dereferencing non-references), when you try to do something that cannot be done (open a bi-directional pipe), use a deprecated feature (implicite @_), or did something you probably didn't want to do (exiting eval with next, mying the same variable twice in the same context</code>), etc, etc.

    But the use of goto is not deprecated, and you will not get much support to get it deprecated. And it's hardly likely someone types goto by accident.

    Warning should be used to prevent programmers from making mistakes - as soon as warnings will be misused to force a coding style upon programmers, use of use warnings and -w will plummit - and rightly so. Forcing a coding style, one way or the other, upon something else is Pythonesque.

    Abigail

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Re^2: GOTO considered (a necessary) evil?
by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Jul 15, 2002 at 16:11 UTC
    I disagree, for the many reasons others have already pointed out. The sentiment that you have to wipe out all gotos at all cost is cargo cult.

    Makeshifts last the longest.

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Re: Re: GOTO considered (a necessary) evil?
by BrentDax (Hermit) on Jul 17, 2002 at 00:56 UTC
    (Ten years from now, at the meeting of the Perl Programming Style Cabal...)

    "I want to remove regexes from the language. Lots of people uglify their programs by using it."

    "All in favor of removing regexes, say aye. All opposed, say nay."

    (A chorous of "Aye"s fills the room.)

    =cut
    --Brent Dax
    There is no sig.

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        Ten years from now, at the meeting of the Perl Programming Style Cabal...

      TINPPSC. Shhh.

      --
      The hell with paco, vote for Erudil!
      :wq

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