BP-3-4 Unconditional Jump and Programming Style

Chapter 03 Control Flow

5. Unconditional Jump

5.1 Goto Statement

goto <statement-label>;
......
<statement-label>: <statements>; //here statements is called labeled-statement

goto means jumping to the labeled-statement corresponding to its statement-lebel.

Remember that we’re not allowed to use goto to jump through function definition or over variable definition.

And we seldom use goto to jump from outside a compound statement to inside a compound statement.

5.2 Break Statement

break;

Break statement has two main functions:

1. End a branch of the switch statement;
2. End the iteration body containing it.

• Break statement only jumps out of the inner layer of iteration. If you want to jump out of multiple layers of iteration, please use goto statement or use a flag, which is a variable placed along with loop condition using &&.

5.3 Continue Statement

continue;

Continue statement can only be used in the iteration body, which means end the current loop and jump to the next loop.

6. Programming Style

Usually, when we judge a program, in addition to correctness and efficiency, readability is also a quite important criteria, which makes the program easy to maintain and indirectly influenced its correctness.

6.1 Structured Programming, SP

Structured Programming refers to a series of programming method which improves the readability and maintenance.

It demands the program itself is well-structured as well as the process of designing the program.

To a program, well-structured refers to:

• Each program should feature only one entrance and only one exit.
• There’s no statements in the program which will never stop implementing, which means the program must exit in a limited time.
• There’s no useless statements in the program, which means each statement in the program should be implemented or at least has a chance to be implemented.

6.2 About goto

goto is the most primitive and classic control-statement, which is widely used in the early programs. But it will destroyed the one-entrance-one-exit feature of the program if used improperly, which betrays the principle of structured programming.

And it has been proved that goto-statement is not necessary and irreplaceable, so we should try our best to avoid usage of goto-statement to move forward or backward.