Re: Are Goto's in the Linux Kernel necessarily bad?

[Mike Connor <mikec@silug.org>]

It depends on why they're being used.  In the kernel, they are being used 
for error handling, and pretty much only error handling in complex 
situations.

A typical situation is setting up a data structure or some hardware that 
requires multiple steps, like say 10.  If any step goes wrong, you cannot 
continue.  To do this "properly", it would require a 10 deep nested 
if/then/else statement.  They get nasty around 3.  The goto way is much 
easier to read and modify.  Plus, it's faster executing (~75 extra 
machine instructions to do a 10 deep), which matters  when some of these 
functions are executing many times a second (sched.c).

Any other use of a goto usually means bad code or intentionally 
obfuscated.

Mike

On Sat, 15 Feb 2003, Jonathan Drews wrote:

> I have heard that there are many goto statements in the Linux kernel. 
> The accepted convention is that goto statements are a source of 
> programming errors and therefore inherently bad. Is this true and will 
> the use of these goto statements make the Linux kernel  unstable? 
> 
> 
> 							TIA,
> 
> 							Jonathan
> 
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