tjr@ihnet.UUCP (Tom Roberts) (06/12/84)
Several articles have discussed the necessity of including goto-s in (new) programming-languages. Others have said that you need them to: 1) exit from deeply-nested structures (loops). 2) handle error conditions efficiently. I believe that a third reason overshadows these two: code generators. I have written several pre-processors, for both FORTRAN and C, which rely heavily upon using goto-s; avoiding goto-s would have enormously complicated them. This is an appealing method for creating application- specific languages quickly, and I think that a major component of the "new wave" in computer programming will involve application-specific languages. Leaving goto-s out of the underlying general-purpose language would be a major mistake. Tom Roberts ihnp4!ihnet!tjr