The goto Statement

The goto Statement

I feel that this book would not be not complete without mentioning the goto statement, although I do not recommend that you use the goto statement unless it's absolutely necessary. The main reason that the goto statement is discouraged is because its usage may make the C program unreliable and hard to debug.

The following is the general form of the goto statement:

labelname:
   statement1;
   statement2;
   .
   .
   .
   goto  labelname;

Here labelname is a label name that tells the goto statement where to jump. You have to place labelname in two places: One is at the place where the goto statement is going to jump (note that a colon must follow the label name), and the other is the place following the goto keyword. You have to follow the same rules to make a label name as you name a variable or function.

Also, the place for the goto statement to jump to can appear either before or after the statement.