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Is GOTO in PHP evil?

Asked 2009-12-14T10:04:53.047
77

I recently found out that PHP 5.3 supports new language construct called GOTO. Everybody knows what it does. However, it's not exactly the traditional GOTO, it's just a jump label. I'm interesting in knowing whether this GOTO is evil and implies bad code?

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Are guns evil? Both can be used for good or for evil. I would say it was easier to write good code without goto, than with.

answered 2009-12-14T10:06:47.070
5

As a software engineer, i mostly work on "mainframes" and "big corporate servers"... And our daily language (I mean the one in 95% of our base code) is Cobol, which uses extensively GOTOs.

This usage doesn't mean the code is bad. It just means that this tool (GOTO) was the right one at the moment programs were written.

To answer Kaitsuli's question, I think it can be useful tool when writing PHP scripts. On the other hand, a lot of scripts were achieved without it for almost a decade by now. Furthermore, it goes against PHP's evolution with more object-oriented features.

IMHO, it's nor good nor a bad thing for the code be produced : good programs will still be good and "horror programs" will be worse... The only question is : "Why adding GOTOs 10 years after proving it was not necessary ?".

answered 2009-12-14T10:48:21.230

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