From: Miss Islington (bot) <31488909+miss-islington@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2021 04:21:52 +0000 (-0700) Subject: bpo-43199: Briefly explain why no goto (GH-24852) X-Git-Tag: v3.8.9~30 X-Git-Url: http://git.ipfire.org/gitweb.cgi?a=commitdiff_plain;h=59f2741c4a1a53d4122d2cb512337f4b88619de9;p=thirdparty%2FPython%2Fcpython.git 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 --- diff --git a/Doc/faq/design.rst b/Doc/faq/design.rst index f91b51bf8f86..65d6a8e70dbb 100644 --- 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 index 000000000000..d1b454fabd7f --- /dev/null +++ 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.