Re: two xasserts in squid3

> On Mon, Feb 11, 2008, Amos Jeffries wrote:
>
>> > I end up with -one- exit location in the function and I don't have to
>> > bum around using extra functions or massively nested conditional
>> > constructs to achieve it. In fact, I've used goto in a few places to
>> > tidy up the code..
>>
>> If you need to use it to clean up a single function. It's an obvious
>> sign
>> that the function is too complicated. In 10 years of writing complicated
>> code I have yet to see a single place where it is actually required.
>
> Required? No. Useful? Yes.
>
> Too often I've seen people push the "cleanup" stuff into another function,
> thinking that bit of refactoring was a good idea. Thing is, if they didn't
> document that the function is private just for another function, some
> other
> coder will come along later, see the function, and think its fine for them
> to use (solving their immediate problem.) This leads to badness in the
> future.
>
> It took me quite a while to get over the "goto is evil, never ever use it"
> koolaid. But then, in C++, you should be using exceptions, not weird
> flow control tricks. :)

I've never fully subscribed to that generalisation. But the arguments made
in its favour have made me think about the necessity of several constructs
use in code.
 In general I have found goto is largely useless. Where its most tempting
is in badly designed code.
 typedef has its place in C particularly for portability issues, but that
is vastly reduced in C++. I've only seen the event/callback
function-pointers as a required use for it nowadays. That only because
none has shown me a better way to do function pointers than the way squid
currently does them.

Amos
Received on Sun Feb 10 2008 - 20:03:19 MST