Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrmuagi | Hacker News Reader

C and gotos are common from what I've seen -- userspace and kernel C code deals with error handling and resource freeing easier that way.

Open to see examples of (good) C code that doesn't use it though.

I used goto's fairly often to separate the happy path from the unhappy one. That's way better than confusing jumbles of if statements.

  if(something_bad)
  {
    err = BADTHING1;
    goto oops;
  }

  // more stuff

  return 0;
  
  oops:
  return err;

I'll add

1. keep code that performs calculations separate from code that performs side effects. In fact isolate the latter as much as possible.

2. Avoid spooky action at a distance. Code should relentlessly work towards a clear goal.