> A static analyser can't decide if you do "good goto" or "bad goto", but it's easy to ban goto outright and avoid all the "bad gotos". That depends on the got

> A static analyser can't decide if you do "good goto" or "bad goto", but it's easy to ban goto outright and avoid all the "bad gotos". That depends on the goto statement. A good static analyzer can certainly recognize a "goto exit" pattern. There is very little difference in a function graph between an if/then/else clause and a goto statement. In fact, most static analyzers perform a first pass that is pretty similar to a compiler so that it can build a function graph for performing data analysis along each of the potential branches. One this pass is performed, it doesn't matter if you used an if/then/else, a for/while/do-while, a switch statement, or a complex sequence of break or continue statements. A graph is a graph. The more succinct question is, "What constitutes a 'good' goto statement?" From the perspective of a static analyzer, it would be applying the exact same analysis as it would for any other branch in the function graph. If it detects a memory leak, a use-after-free, or a use of data which isn't always initialized, it makes little difference whether this is because of a bad goto statement or a sloppy set of conditionals. Either the graph shows a problem, or it does not.