A control statement for natural top-down structured programming

Abstract

In recent years there has been a great deal of discussion concerned with the advantages of a top-down structured style of programming and the question of whether or not to banish the goto control statement. The most compelling arguments for the retention of goto have referred to common programming situations where the absence of goto causes some awkwardness in the programming task or loss of efficiency for the running program. We propose a new control statement which alleviates many of these known difficulties while maintaining the philosophy of structured control. The new statement is well-matched to top-down programming and in some respects allows program modifications to be performed more easily.