Hi John! :-)

 JHG> Fact remains, if you
 JHG> know what your doing, you can code *ANYTHING* without having to 
 JHG> "break" out of a loop, or "GOTO" a label, etc. 
You can, no doubt on that. However, sometimes a break or goto can be much
clearer in the end.

Consider:

    FILE *fp;
    int res;

    fp = fopen("foo", "w");
    res = write(fp, ...); /* some data */
    if (res = -1) {
        fclose(fp);
        return -1;
    }
    res = write(fp, ...); /* some other data */
    fclose(fp);
    return res;

and:

    FILE *fp;
    int res;

    fp = fopen("foo", "w");    
    res = write(fp, ...);
    if (res == -1)
        goto out;
    res = write(fp, ...);
out:
    fclose(fp);
    return res;

The latter keeps the cleanup code (in this case only one fclose, but there
could be several lines of cleanup code) in one place and not duplicated at
each possible exit point.

In the end, it's all a matter of personal taste when the language has
several constructs that can do the same job.

Consider this routine and how it would look like if it had to be written
without "break":

/*
 * create directory hierarchy up to dirname of path
 *
 * path: absolute path to object we are about to create
 */
static int mkdirhier(const char *path)
{
        char *work, *last;
        int res = 0;
        struct stat buf;

        /* need working copy */ 
        work = strdup(path);
        if (!work)
                return -1;
                
        last = work;
        do {
                *last = '/';
                last = strchr(last+1, '/');

                /* component left to check? */          
                if (last != NULL) {
                        *last = '\0';
                        res = stat(work, &buf);
                        
                        /* existing directory, ok */
                        if (res == 0 && S_ISDIR(buf.st_mode))
                                continue;
                        
                        /* existing other object, bad */        
                        if (res == 0) {
                                res = -1;
                                break;
                        }
                        
                        /* nothing there, create directory */
                        res = mkdir(work, 0755);
                        if (res != 0)
                                break;
                }
        } while (last);
        
        free(work);
        return res;
}

Ciao
Pascal

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