bpo-43199: Briefly explain why no goto (GH-24852)

Answer "Why is there no goto?" in the Design and History FAQ.
(cherry picked from commit 5e29021a5eb10baa9147fd977cab82fa3f652bf0)

Co-authored-by: Terry Jan Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu>

diff --git a/Doc/faq/design.rst b/Doc/faq/design.rst
index f91b51bf8f86cce4c6803325420a4c368186d154..65d6a8e70dbba57dcd7a41f5c54fe4da0f194f2e 100644 (file)
--- a/Doc/faq/design.rst
+++ b/Doc/faq/design.rst
@@ -599,7 +599,15 @@ sloppy and not write test cases at all.
 Why is there no goto?
 ---------------------
 
-You can use exceptions to provide a "structured goto" that even works across
+In the 1970s people realized that unrestricted goto could lead
+to messy "sphagetti" code that was hard to understand and revise.
+In a high-level language, it is also unneeded as long as there
+are ways to branch (in Python, with ``if`` statements and ``or``,
+``and``, and ``if-else`` expressions) and loop (with ``while``
+and ``for`` statements, possibly containing ``continue`` and ``break``).
+
+One can also use exceptions to provide a "structured goto"
+that works even across
 function calls.  Many feel that exceptions can conveniently emulate all
 reasonable uses of the "go" or "goto" constructs of C, Fortran, and other
 languages.  For example::

diff --git a/Misc/NEWS.d/next/Documentation/2021-03-13-18-43-54.bpo-43199.ZWA6KX.rst b/Misc/NEWS.d/next/Documentation/2021-03-13-18-43-54.bpo-43199.ZWA6KX.rst
new file mode 100644 (file)
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+++ b/Misc/NEWS.d/next/Documentation/2021-03-13-18-43-54.bpo-43199.ZWA6KX.rst
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Answer "Why is there no goto?" in the Design and History FAQ.