计算机科学家Edsger Dijkstra在该领域做出了重大贡献，他也因批评GoTo的使用而闻名。 维基百科上有一篇关于他观点的短文。

我发现有趣的是，有些人会给出一个可以接受goto的例子列表，说所有其他的用法都是不可接受的。你真的认为你知道每种情况下goto是表达算法的最佳选择吗?

为了说明这一点，我将给你一个还没有人展示过的例子:

今天我在写代码，在哈希表中插入一个元素。哈希表是以前计算的缓存，可以随意重写(影响性能但不影响正确性)。

哈希表的每个桶都有4个槽，当桶满时，我有一堆标准来决定覆盖哪个元素。现在，这意味着在一个桶中最多要经过三次，就像这样:

// Overwrite an element with same hash key if it exists
for (add_index=0; add_index < ELEMENTS_PER_BUCKET; add_index++)
  if (slot_p[add_index].hash_key == hash_key)
    goto add;

// Otherwise, find first empty element
for (add_index=0; add_index < ELEMENTS_PER_BUCKET; add_index++)
  if ((slot_p[add_index].type == TT_ELEMENT_EMPTY)
    goto add;

// Additional passes go here...

add:
// element is written to the hash table here

如果不使用goto，代码会是什么样子?

就像这样:

// Overwrite an element with same hash key if it exists
for (add_index=0; add_index < ELEMENTS_PER_BUCKET; add_index++)
  if (slot_p[add_index].hash_key == hash_key)
    break;

if (add_index >= ELEMENTS_PER_BUCKET) {
  // Otherwise, find first empty element
  for (add_index=0; add_index < ELEMENTS_PER_BUCKET; add_index++)
    if ((slot_p[add_index].type == TT_ELEMENT_EMPTY)
      break;
  if (add_index >= ELEMENTS_PER_BUCKET)
   // Additional passes go here (nested further)...
}

// element is written to the hash table here

如果添加更多的遍数，它看起来会越来越糟，而带有goto的版本始终保持相同的缩进级别，并避免使用虚假的if语句，其结果由前一个循环的执行暗示。

所以在另一种情况下，goto使代码更清晰，更容易编写和理解……我相信还有更多的例子，所以不要假装知道所有goto有用的例子，而轻视任何你想不到的好例子。

在Perl模块中，有时希望动态地创建子例程或闭包。问题是，一旦你创建了子例程，你如何得到它。你可以直接调用它，但是如果子例程使用caller()，那么它就没有那么有用了。这就是goto &子例程变化可能有用的地方。

这里有一个简单的例子:

sub AUTOLOAD{
  my($self) = @_;
  my $name = $AUTOLOAD;
  $name =~ s/.*:://;

  *{$name} = my($sub) = sub{
    # the body of the closure
  }

  goto $sub;

  # nothing after the goto will ever be executed.
}

您还可以使用这种形式的goto来提供尾部调用优化的基本形式。

sub factorial($){
  my($n,$tally) = (@_,1);

  return $tally if $n <= 1;

  $tally *= $n--;
  @_ = ($n,$tally);
  goto &factorial;
}

(在Perl 5 version 16中，最好写成goto __SUB__;)

有一个模块会导入尾修饰符，如果你不喜欢使用这种形式的goto，还有一个模块会导入递归。

use Sub::Call::Tail;
sub AUTOLOAD {
  ...
  tail &$sub( @_ );
}

use Sub::Call::Recur;
sub factorial($){
  my($n,$tally) = (@_,1);

  return $tally if $n <= 1;
  recur( $n-1, $tally * $n );
}

使用goto的大多数其他原因都可以用其他关键字更好地完成。

比如重写一段代码:

LABEL: ;
...
goto LABEL if $x;

{
  ...
  redo if $x;
}

或者从多个地方找到最后一段代码:

goto LABEL if $x;
...
goto LABEL if $y;
...
LABEL: ;

{
  last if $x;
  ...
  last if $y
  ...
}

1) The most common use of goto that I know of is emulating exception handling in languages that don't offer it, namely in C. (The code given by Nuclear above is just that.) Look at the Linux source code and you'll see a bazillion gotos used that way; there were about 100,000 gotos in Linux code according to a quick survey conducted in 2013: http://blog.regehr.org/archives/894. Goto usage is even mentioned in the Linux coding style guide: https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/CodingStyle. Just like object-oriented programming is emulated using structs populated with function pointers, goto has its place in C programming. So who is right: Dijkstra or Linus (and all Linux kernel coders)? It's theory vs. practice basically.

There is however the usual gotcha for not having compiler-level support and checks for common constructs/patterns: it's easier to use them wrong and introduce bugs without compile-time checks. Windows and Visual C++ but in C mode offer exception handling via SEH/VEH for this very reason: exceptions are useful even outside OOP languages, i.e. in a procedural language. But the compiler can't always save your bacon, even if it offers syntactic support for exceptions in the language. Consider as example of the latter case the famous Apple SSL "goto fail" bug, which just duplicated one goto with disastrous consequences (https://www.imperialviolet.org/2014/02/22/applebug.html):

if (something())
  goto fail;
  goto fail; // copypasta bug
printf("Never reached\n");
fail:
  // control jumps here

使用编译器支持的异常也会出现同样的错误，例如在c++中:

struct Fail {};

try {
  if (something())
    throw Fail();
    throw Fail(); // copypasta bug
  printf("Never reached\n");
}
catch (Fail&) {
  // control jumps here
}

But both variants of the bug can be avoided if the compiler analyzes and warns you about unreachable code. For example compiling with Visual C++ at the /W4 warning level finds the bug in both cases. Java for instance forbids unreachable code (where it can find it!) for a pretty good reason: it's likely to be a bug in the average Joe's code. As long as the goto construct doesn't allow targets that the compiler can't easily figure out, like gotos to computed addresses(**), it's not any harder for the compiler to find unreachable code inside a function with gotos than using Dijkstra-approved code.

(**) Footnote: Gotos to computed line numbers are possible in some versions of Basic, e.g. GOTO 10*x where x is a variable. Rather confusingly, in Fortran "computed goto" refers to a construct that is equivalent to a switch statement in C. Standard C doesn't allow computed gotos in the language, but only gotos to statically/syntactically declared labels. GNU C however has an extension to get the address of a label (the unary, prefix && operator) and also allows a goto to a variable of type void*. See https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Labels-as-Values.html for more on this obscure sub-topic. The rest of this post ins't concerned with that obscure GNU C feature.

标准C(即未计算的)goto通常不是无法在编译时找到不可达代码的原因。通常的原因是如下所示的逻辑代码。鉴于

int computation1() {
  return 1;
}

int computation2() {
  return computation1();
}

对于编译器来说，在以下3种结构中找到不可访问的代码同样困难:

void tough1() {
  if (computation1() != computation2())
    printf("Unreachable\n");
}

void tough2() {
  if (computation1() == computation2())
    goto out;
  printf("Unreachable\n");
out:;
}

struct Out{};

void tough3() {
  try {
    if (computation1() == computation2())
      throw Out();
    printf("Unreachable\n");
  }
  catch (Out&) {
  }
}

(请原谅我使用了与大括号相关的编码风格，但我试图使示例尽可能紧凑。)

Visual c++ /W4(即使使用/Ox)也无法在这些类型中找到无法到达的代码，而且正如您可能知道的那样，寻找无法到达的代码的问题通常是无法确定的。(如果你不相信我的话:https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/2006/OptComp/slides/lecture02.pdf)

As a related issue, the C goto can be used to emulate exceptions only inside the body of a function. The standard C library offers a setjmp() and longjmp() pair of functions for emulating non-local exits/exceptions, but those have some serious drawbacks compared to what other languages offer. The Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setjmp.h explains fairly well this latter issue. This function pair also works on Windows (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/yz2ez4as.aspx), but hardly anyone uses them there because SEH/VEH is superior. Even on Unix, I think setjmp and longjmp are very seldom used.

2) I think the second most common use of goto in C is implementing multi-level break or multi-level continue, which is also a fairly uncontroversial use case. Recall that Java doesn't allow goto label, but allows break label or continue label. According to http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/simple-142616.html, this is actually the most common use case of gotos in C (90% they say), but in my subjective experience, system code tends to use gotos for error handling more often. Perhaps in scientific code or where the OS offers exception handling (Windows) then multi-level exits are the dominant use case. They don't really give any details as to the context of their survey.

编辑补充:这两种使用模式出现在Kernighan和Ritchie的C语言书的第60页左右(取决于版本)。另一件值得注意的事情是，这两个用例都只涉及forward goto。MISRA C 2012版(不像2004版)现在允许goto，只要它们是向前的。

因为goto使得程序流的推理变得困难。“意大利面条代码”)，goto通常只用于弥补缺失的功能:使用goto实际上可能是可以接受的，但前提是语言没有提供更结构化的变体来获得相同的目标。以《怀疑》为例:

我们使用的goto规则是，goto可以跳转到函数中的单个退出清理点。

这是对的——但前提是语言不允许使用清理代码进行结构化异常处理(如RAII或finally)，后者可以更好地完成相同的工作(因为它是专门为此而构建的)，或者有很好的理由不使用结构化异常处理(但除非在非常低的级别，否则您永远不会遇到这种情况)。

在大多数其他语言中，goto唯一可接受的用法是退出嵌套循环。即使在这种情况下，将外部循环提升为自己的方法并使用return也总是更好。

除此之外，goto是对特定代码段考虑不够的标志。

支持goto实现一些限制的现代语言(例如，goto可能不会跳转到函数中或跳出函数)，但问题从根本上还是一样的。

顺便说一句，其他语言特性当然也是如此，尤其是例外。而且通常有严格的规则，只在指定的地方使用这些特性，例如不使用异常来控制非异常程序流的规则。

盲目地遵循最佳实践并不是最佳实践。避免将goto语句作为流控制的主要形式是为了避免产生难以阅读的意大利面条代码。如果在正确的地方谨慎使用，它们有时可以成为表达想法的最简单、最清晰的方式。Walter Bright, Zortech c++编译器和D编程语言的创造者，经常使用它们，但很明智。即使使用了goto语句，他的代码仍然完全可读。

底线:为了避免去那里而避免去那里是毫无意义的。您真正需要避免的是生成不可读的代码。如果充满goto的代码是可读的，那么它就没有任何问题。