Continue Considered Harmful? [closed]

Answer 1

If continue is causing a problem with readability, then chances are you have other problems. For example, massive amounts of code inside a for loop. If you have to write large for loops, I would try to stick to using continue close to the top of the for loop. Otherwise, a continue buried deep in the middle of a for loop can easily be missed.

Answer 2

I'd say: "it depends".

If you have reasonably small loop code (where you can see the whole loop-code without scrolling) its usually ok to use a continue.

However, if the loops body is large (for example due to a big switch), and there is some followup code (say below the switch), you may easily introduce bugs by adding a continue and thus skipping over that code sometimes. I have encountered this in the heart of a bytecode interpreter, where some instrumentation code was sometimes not executed due to a continue in some case-branches.

This might be a somewhat artificially constructed case, but I generally try to avoid continue and use an if (but not nesting too deep as in the Rob's sample code).

Answer 3

I believe the bottom line argument against continue is that it makes it harder to PROVE that the code is correct. This is prove in the mathematical sense. But it probably doesn't matter to you because no one has the resources to 'prove' a computer program that is significantly complex.

Enter the static-analysis tools. You may make things harder on them...

And the goto, that sounds like a nightmare for the same reasons but at any random place in code.

Answer 4

There are not harmful keywords. There's only harmful uses of them.

Goto is not harmful per se, neither is continue. They need to be used carefully, that's all.

Answer 5

If you are iterating through any kind of a result set, and performing operations on said results, for e.g within a for each, and if one particular result caused a problem, its rather useful in capturing an expected error (via try-catch), logging it, and moving on to the next result via continue. Continue is especially useful, imo, for unattended services that do jobs at odd hours, and one exception shouldn't affect the other x number of records.

Answer 6

goto can be used as a continue, but not the reverse.

You can "goto" anywhere, thus break flow control arbitrarily.

Thus continue, not nearly as harmful.