每个人都知道Dijkstra的《致编辑的信》:goto语句被认为是有害的(这里。html transcript和这里。pdf),从那时起,就有一种强大的推动力,尽可能避免使用goto语句。虽然可以使用goto来生成不可维护的、庞大的代码,但它仍然存在于现代编程语言中。即使Scheme中先进的连续控制结构也可以被描述为复杂的后向。

在什么情况下需要使用goto?什么时候最好避免?

作为一个后续问题:C提供了一对函数setjmp()和longjmp(),它们不仅提供了在当前堆栈帧内进行跳转的能力,还提供了在任何调用帧内进行跳转的能力。这些应该被认为和goto一样危险吗?更危险?


Dijkstra自己也对这个头衔感到后悔,因为这不是他的责任。在EWD1308的结尾(也在这里。pdf),他写道:

Finally a short story for the record. In 1968, the Communications of the ACM published a text of mine under the title "The goto statement considered harmful", which in later years would be most frequently referenced, regrettably, however, often by authors who had seen no more of it than its title, which became a cornerstone of my fame by becoming a template: we would see all sorts of articles under the title "X considered harmful" for almost any X, including one titled "Dijkstra considered harmful". But what had happened? I had submitted a paper under the title "A case against the goto statement", which, in order to speed up its publication, the editor had changed into a "letter to the Editor", and in the process he had given it a new title of his own invention! The editor was Niklaus Wirth.

Donald E. Knuth写了一篇关于这个主题的经典论文,它与Dijkstra的论文相匹配,那就是结构化编程与语句。阅读既有助于重建上下文,也有助于对主题的非教条性理解。在本文中,Dijkstra对这个案例的观点被报道,并且更加强烈:

Donald E. Knuth:我相信通过呈现这样一个 事实上,我并不是不同意 Dijkstra的观点,因为 他最近写道: “请不要落入。 相信我是可怕的 教条的关于[去]的教条的 声明)。我觉得很不舒服 感觉别人在做 宗教出来了,好像 编程的概念问题 只用一个小技巧就能解决,用什么 一种简单的编码纪律!”


当前回答

我只记得用过一次goto。我有一系列五个嵌套计数循环,我需要能够根据某些条件从内部打破整个结构:

    for{
      for{
        for{
          for{
            for{
              if(stuff){
                GOTO ENDOFLOOPS;
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
    
    ENDOFLOOPS:

我可以很容易地声明一个布尔中断变量,并将其用作每个循环的条件的一部分,但在这种情况下,我认为GOTO是一样实用和一样可读的。

没有迅猛龙攻击我。

其他回答

Since I began doing a few things in the linux kernel, gotos don't bother me so much as they once did. At first I was sort of horrified to see they (kernel guys) added gotos into my code. I've since become accustomed to the use of gotos, in some limited contexts, and will now occasionally use them myself. Typically, it's a goto that jumps to the end of a function to do some kind of cleanup and bail out, rather than duplicating that same cleanup and bailout in several places in the function. And typically, it's not something large enough to hand off to another function -- e.g. freeing some locally (k)malloc'ed variables is a typical case.

I've written code that used setjmp/longjmp only once. It was in a MIDI drum sequencer program. Playback happened in a separate process from all user interaction, and the playback process used shared memory with the UI process to get the limited info it needed to do the playback. When the user wanted to stop playback, the playback process just did a longjmp "back to the beginning" to start over, rather than some complicated unwinding of wherever it happened to be executing when the user wanted it to stop. It worked great, was simple, and I never had any problems or bugs related to it in that instance.

Setjmp /longjmp有它们自己的位置——但那个位置是你不太可能只在很长一段时间内访问一次的地方。

编辑:我只是看了一下代码。实际上,我使用的是siglongjmp(),而不是longjmp(不是说这是一个大问题,但我已经忘记了siglongjmp的存在。)

几乎所有可以使用goto的情况,都可以使用其他结构实现相同的效果。无论如何,编译器都会使用Goto。

我个人从来没有明确地使用它,也不需要。

实际上,我发现自己不得不使用goto,因为我真的想不出更好(更快)的方法来编写这段代码:

我有一个复杂的对象,我需要对它做一些操作。如果对象处于一种状态,那么我就可以进行快速操作,否则我就必须进行慢速操作。问题是,在某些情况下,在缓慢的手术过程中,可能会意识到这可以用快速手术来完成。

SomeObject someObject;    

if (someObject.IsComplex())    // this test is trivial
{
    // begin slow calculations here
    if (result of calculations)
    {
        // just discovered that I could use the fast calculation !
        goto Fast_Calculations;
    }
    // do the rest of the slow calculations here
    return;
}

if (someObject.IsmediumComplex())    // this test is slightly less trivial
{
    Fast_Calculations:
    // Do fast calculations
    return;
}

// object is simple, no calculations needed.

这是一个实时UI代码的速度关键部分,所以我真的认为GOTO在这里是合理的。

Hugo

c++包含构造函数和析构函数。这允许一种称为RAII(资源分配是初始化)的模式。基本上,您创建一个本地堆栈变量,创建堆栈变量的行为打开一个文件,分配内存,锁定一个互斥锁,或以其他方式获取一个稍后必须释放的资源。

当变量超出作用域时,析构函数将运行并释放资源。

C语言没有这个特性。但您仍然经常需要在函数开始时获取资源,并在结束时释放它们。

你的函数可能有一个或多个错误条件导致它提前返回。您不希望重复资源释放代码。解决方案是使用goto。

例子:

int
foo(const char *arg)
{
    char *argcopy = strdup(arg);

    if (!isvalid(argcopy))
        goto out1;

    FILE *myfile = fopen(argcopy, "r");
    if (myfile == NULL)
      goto out1;

    char bytes[10];
    if (fread(bytes, sizeof(bytes), 1, myfile) != sizeof(mybytes))
        goto out2;

    /* do some actual work */
    /* .... */
    /* end of actual work */

    out2:
    fclose(myfile);

    out1:
    free(argcopy);

    return 0;
 }

goto有一些问题。一是很难看到代码是如何流动的。因为花括号,所以更容易看到if-block,但是goto隐藏了它。此外,while和if本质上也是goto,但它们有助于解释为什么要在代码中来回跳转。有了一个固定的目标,你必须自己拼凑起来。

作为练习,试着编写一些计算斐波那契数列的代码,看看当你完成后,它有多难阅读。

如果你要处理这些代码,那么我建议你写一些单元测试,然后重写它。否则,就顺其自然吧。

尽管如此,有时出于性能原因,使用goto“可能”是合适的。