Continue Considered Harmful? [closed]

Answer 1

Others have hinted at it... but continue and break are enforced by the compiler and have their own associated rules. Goto has no such limitations, though the net effect might almost be the same, in some circumstances.

I do not consider continue or break to be harmful per se, though I'm sure either can be used poorly in a way that would make any sane programmer gag.

Answer 2

You can write good code with or without continue and you can write bad code with or without continue.

There probably is some overlap with arguments about goto, but as far as I'm concerned the use of continue is equivalent to using break statements (in loops) or return statement from anywhere in a method body - if used correctly it can simplify the code (less likely to contain bugs, easier to maintain).

Answer 3

1. Using continue at the beginning of a loop to avoid iteration over unnecessary elements is not harmful and can be very useful, but using it in the middle of nested ifs and elses can turn the loop code into a complex maze, to understand and validate.

2. I think its usage avoidance is also the result of a semantic misunderstanding. People who does never see/write 'continue' keyword on their code, when seeing a code with continue can interpret it as "the continuation of the natural flow". If instead of continue we had next, for instance, I think more people would appreciate this valuable cursor feature.

Answer 4

I like to use continue at the beginning of loops for handling simple if conditions.

To me it makes the code more readable since there is not extra nesting and you can see that I have explicitly dealt with these cases.

Is this the same reason that I would use a goto? Perhaps. I do use them for readability at times and to stop the nesting of code but I usually use them more for cleanup/error handling.

Answer 5

I don't think continue could ever be as difficult as goto since continue never moves execution out of the code block that it is in.

Answer 6

As far as this programmer is concerned, Nested if/else considered harmful.