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Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 16:08:38 -0500
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To: Jeff Moore <jeff@procata.com>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] GOTO operator
From: sthomas@townnews.com (Shaun Thomas)

Jeff Moore wrote:

> function pseudocode()  {
>     try {
>         $a = allocate_resource_z();
>         $b = allocate_resource_y();
>         $res = do_stuff();
>         $c = allocate_resource_x();
>         $res = do_more_stuff();
>         $d = allocate_resource_foo();
>         $res = do_even_more_stuff();
>     } catch ( Exception $e ) {
>         free_resouce($a);
>         free_resouce($b);
>         if(isset($c)) free_resouce($c);
>         if(isset($d)) free_resouce($c);
>         throw ($e);
>     }
> }
> 
> Where did the if statements go?  do_stuff(), do_more_stuff(),  and 
> do_even_more_stuff() should throw exceptions rather than return boolean 
> error indicators.

True, which is really just a more revised version of the point that's 
been being passed around in one form or another.  I was assuming the 
functions called didn't necessarily throw errors, like a PHP internal or 
similar, where you'd want to check the return code - but for an 
application coded around try/catch/throw, this would work perfectly.

Personally, I'm used to the PEAR_Error, and PEAR::isError() method of 
error handling, so having the luxury of try/catch/throw in PHP 5 is a 
major improvement.  But I guess the point is that having goto isn't 
really essential, as the original example tried to imply.

But Ilia and Rasmus are also correct in that it wouldn't really hurt 
anything to add goto functionality, either.  Most would ignore it, and 
it can only scope locally, so there's little chance of spaghetti.  Sure, 
it's gross in general, but PHP isn't Python: enforcing coding style 
isn't PHP's thing.

And as others have pointed out, we can all cite code that looks nasty, 
regardless of the presence of goto.  For anyone who's ever seen Python 
code that *only* follows the indentation requirement, it does little to 
improve overall quality of the end product.  Bad programmers will always 
find ways around language constructs, intentionally or otherwise.  I'm 
just waiting for a language that imposes Javadoc style commenting in a 
40% or greater ratio of comments to code, consistent indentation, brace 
style, and so on, just to see how it gets circumvented.  Which is why I 
find it amusing PHP enforces camel-caps for class method names; that 
simply encourages bad programmers to use all lower case to avoid the 
issue entirely.

-- 
Shaun M. Thomas                INN Database Administrator
Phone: (309) 743-0812          Fax  : (309) 743-0830
Email: sthomas@townnews.com    Web  : www.townnews.com