🚀 go-pugleaf

Bill Winn wrote:
> 
> In article <4gnbcp$biq@solutions.solon.com>, news@dcs.warwick.ac.uk
> composed...
> >In code that I write, and see, every day, break is very commonly used
> >to exit a loop.  In fact, I sometimes have a break being the /only/ way
> >to exit a loop.  (Something like perl's split loop body would be a nice
> >addition to the language.)  I don't consider it to be in any way bad
> >style.
> >
> >What does this standard say about continue and goto?
> >
> 
> I beg to differ.  break, used in the context of loops, is nothing more than
> a glorified goto statement. 

False. Since the the break can only "goto" one specific location, it is
no more a glorified goto than is a loop or switch construct, or even an
if-statement for that matter. The above are all "glorified gotos" in
this sense. What makes them different from goto is the non-arbitrariness
of the destination. 

> If you have conditions that force a loop to
> stop executing why not just have a flag that is set when the loop is to
> terminate?  Sure, you have to go to the top of the loop (in the case of for
> and while) to test for the condition, but I would venture a guess that doing
> such will not cause your system to fail.

This approach requires that everything that follows the setting of this
flag be enclosed in an if-statement that tests this flag. That's a
waste, and it hampers readability, especially if you have to nest this
construct multiple levels. Sure, avoiding "break" is always possible.
That doesn't mean it's sensible.


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