Put your code... (was Re: gotos) [one last time]
Ozan Yigit
oz at yunexus.UUCP
Tue Apr 26 12:29:04 AEST 1988
In article <2597 at ttrdc.UUCP> levy at ttrdc.UUCP (Daniel R. Levy) writes:
>In article <412 at yunexus.UUCP>, oz at yunexus.UUCP (Ozan Yigit) writes:
>[removed parts] ...whole damn suite of examples does not have
>one use of GOTO that he would stoop to calling justifiable. That is a
>serious charge and one which he should either prove or back away from.
>
Oh whoppie. He did carefully qualify his statements with a
reference to current language + compiler technology.
>And why are you so quick to relegate this work to the bit bucket?
>
I am not so quick .. Actually, it took eight years :-). The
article was interesting when I read it around 1980. Today, only
some parts are somewhat interesting, and I think the rest is way
out-of-date and uninteresting, at least for the languages I have
been using. Check out the article and see for yourself. All of his
very structured ways of using GOTOs to get out of loops etc. are
covered by consistent language facilities, which is obviously not
what is argued in the current GOTO discussion(?). As for other
uses of goto for "optimization" purposes: things like "tail
recursion optimization", "code motion out of loops" etc. are the
type of things a good compiler can (or should) deal with. [In fact,
there are languages out there, like SCHEME, where tail-recursion-
removal and tail-call-to-jump optimizations are *generic* to an
implementation. No-one using the language ever thinks about it.]
Even some of Knuth's writings could become out-of-date don't you
think ?? When was the last time you programmed in MIX ?? :-)
oz
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