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!”
被Jay Ballou添加的答案所吸引，我会加入0.02英镑。如果Bruno Ranschaert还没有这样做，我就会提到Knuth的“用GOTO语句进行结构化编程”的文章。
有一件事我没有看到讨论，那就是那种在Fortran教科书中教过的代码，尽管它并不常见。例如DO循环的扩展范围和开放代码子程序(记住，这将是Fortran II, Fortran IV或Fortran 66 -而不是Fortran 77或90)。至少有可能语法细节不准确，但概念应该足够准确。每种情况下的代码片段都在单个函数中。
请注意，由Kernighan和Plauger撰写的优秀但过时(并且绝版)的《编程风格的元素，第二版》中包含了一些来自那个时代(70年代末)编程教科书中滥用GOTO的现实例子。然而，下面的材料并不是来自那本书。
DO循环的扩展范围
do 10 i = 1,30
...blah...
...blah...
if (k.gt.4) goto 37
91 ...blah...
...blah...
10 continue
...blah...
return
37 ...some computation...
goto 91
One reason for such nonsense was the good old-fashioned punch-card. You might notice that the labels (nicely out of sequence because that was canonical style!) are in column 1 (actually, they had to be in columns 1-5) and the code is in columns 7-72 (column 6 was the continuation marker column). Columns 73-80 would be given a sequence number, and there were machines that would sort punch card decks into sequence number order. If you had your program on sequenced cards and needed to add a few cards (lines) into the middle of a loop, you'd have to repunch everything after those extra lines. However, if you replaced one card with the GOTO stuff, you could avoid resequencing all the cards - you just tucked the new cards at the end of the routine with new sequence numbers. Consider it to be the first attempt at 'green computing' - a saving of punch cards (or, more specifically, a saving of retyping labour - and a saving of consequential rekeying errors).
哦，你可能还注意到我在作弊，没有大喊大叫——Fortran IV通常都是大写的。
中非子例程
...blah...
i = 1
goto 76
123 ...blah...
...blah...
i = 2
goto 76
79 ...blah...
...blah...
goto 54
...blah...
12 continue
return
76 ...calculate something...
...blah...
goto (123, 79) i
54 ...more calculation...
goto 12
标签76和54之间的GOTO是计算GOTO的一个版本。如果变量i的值为1，则转到列表中的第一个标签(123);如果它的值是2，就转到秒，以此类推。从76到计算goto的片段是开放编码的子程序。它是一段执行起来很像子例程的代码，但写在函数体中。(Fortran也有语句函数——它们是嵌入在单行上的函数。)
还有比计算goto更糟糕的结构——你可以给变量赋标签，然后使用赋值的goto。google assigned goto告诉我它已经从Fortran 95中删除了。值得注意的是，结构化编程革命可以说是从Dijkstra的“GOTO被认为是有害的”信件或文章开始的。
如果不了解Fortran语言(以及其他语言，其中大多数已经半途而用了)中所做的事情，我们这些新手很难理解Dijkstra所处理的问题的范围。见鬼，直到那封信发表10年后，我才开始编程(但我确实不幸地在Fortran IV中编程了一段时间)。
在我的程序列表中，Goto只是为了它而包含的东西非常低。这并不意味着这是不可接受的。
Goto可以很好地用于状态机。循环中的switch语句(按典型重要性排序):(A)不能实际代表控制流，(b)丑陋，(c)可能效率低下，这取决于语言和编译器。因此，您最终为每个状态编写一个函数，并执行类似“return NEXT_STATE;”的操作，这甚至看起来像goto。
当然，以易于理解的方式对状态机进行编码是很困难的。然而，这些困难都与使用goto无关，也不能通过使用替代控制结构来减少。除非你的语言有一个“状态机”结构。我不喜欢。
在极少数情况下，当您的算法通过通过有限的允许转换集(goto)连接的节点(状态)序列的路径而不是通过任何更具体的控制流(循环、条件等等)来理解时，那么应该在代码中显式地说明这一点。你应该画一个漂亮的图。
Setjmp /longjmp可以很好地实现异常或类似异常的行为。虽然没有得到普遍的赞扬，但异常通常被认为是一种“有效的”控制结构。
Setjmp /longjmp比goto“更危险”，因为它们更难正确使用，更不用说理解了。
从来没有，将来也不会有
永远是，任何语言都是
写不好一点也难
代码。——唐纳德·克努特
从C中去掉goto并不会使用C编写好的代码变得更容易。事实上，这样做反而会忽略一点，即C应该能够作为一种被美化的汇编语言。
接下来是“有害的指针”，然后是“有害的鸭子类型”。那么，当他们来拿走你不安全的编程结构时，谁来保护你呢?是吗?
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。)
