Programming Practices – Is Using Goto Ever Worthwhile?

gotoprogramming practices

goto is almost universally discouraged. Is using this statement ever worthwhile?

Best Answer

This has been discussed several times on Stack Overflow, and Chris Gillum summarized the possible uses of goto:

Cleanly exiting a function

Often in a function, you may allocate resources and need to exit in multiple places. Programmers can simplify their code by putting the resource cleanup code at the end of the function all all "exit points" of the function would goto the cleanup label. This way, you don't have to write cleanup code at every "exit point" of the function.

Exiting nested loops

If you're in a nested loop and need to break out of all loops, a goto can make this much cleaner and simpler than break statements and if-checks.

Low-level performance improvements

This is only valid in perf-critical code, but goto statements execute very quickly and can give you a boost when moving through a function. This is a double-edged sword, however, because a compiler typically cannot optimize code that contains gotos.

I'd argue, as many others would argue, that in all of these cases, the usage of goto is used as a means to get out of a corner one coded oneself into, and is generally a symptom of code that could be refactored.

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