“Goto fail” would have been wrong in a non-goto language that use RAII.
The problem was not goto, it was that the else path was also “give up”. In a non goto/RAII/defer language it would have been something like
If (error)
Return
Return
My assumption has been this was some kind of merge error rather being wrong off the bay. Interestingly mandatory indenting or mandatory braces might have stopped this, but then i would have thought -Werror with the dead code warnings would have as well :-/
But again the error was not the goto, and believing it was is the exact problem the article is talking about: people are so opposed to goto they are unable to see real issues (I have seen C code that tries to avoid goto completely and error handling code becomes horrific, far more complex, and far more error prone that just using goto). The problem with goto is that it is very easy to use it unnecessarily, in ways that complicated control flow but don’t actually make things better.
The problem was not goto, it was that the else path was also “give up”. In a non goto/RAII/defer language it would have been something like
My assumption has been this was some kind of merge error rather being wrong off the bay. Interestingly mandatory indenting or mandatory braces might have stopped this, but then i would have thought -Werror with the dead code warnings would have as well :-/But again the error was not the goto, and believing it was is the exact problem the article is talking about: people are so opposed to goto they are unable to see real issues (I have seen C code that tries to avoid goto completely and error handling code becomes horrific, far more complex, and far more error prone that just using goto). The problem with goto is that it is very easy to use it unnecessarily, in ways that complicated control flow but don’t actually make things better.