[asherkin]

Originally Posted by abrandnewday If people don't mind me asking, what exactly is this "goto" thing and why was it removed? Security reasons? I'm unfamiliar with it.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=why+is+goto+bad

This is pretty well covered already - it makes control flow difficult to reason about.

[Peace-Maker]

Originally Posted by abrandnewday You can reintroduce it into your own SourceMod build if I'm not mistaken. Just "undo" the changes listed here. Compile a build, then you should be able to use whatever this "goto" thing is.

FYI goto has been disabled in the compiler for a much longer time. The commit you linked there just removed the dead code from the compiler as a cleanup, since it's never used.

[headline]

[Powerlord]

Originally Posted by abrandnewday Ahh, interesting. I'll give it the first couple sites a good read. Always love to learn new things about the field I'm going to be going to college for (computer programming).

The seminal work on the subject is Edsger Dijkstra's "Go To Statement Considered Harmful", which you can find reprinted on the web.

The TL;DR version is that "good" uses of goto can be replaced with conditionals; loops; and function calls, while "bad" uses of goto make the program impossible to follow... so why keep it?

Side note: It helps if you know that goto, loops, conditionals, and (to a lesser extent) function calls are all varying types of jump instructions behind the scenes.

[nergal]

curious question I'd rather not test out:

What would happen if I made a vector variable (float[3]) and made a function return float[] and said function returned a float[4]?

PHP Code:

float vecOrigin[3];
float[] ReturnVec()
{
    vecError[4];
    return vecError;
}
vecOrigin = ReturnVec(); 


will it only take the first 3 indices and garbage the 4th?

[Fyren]

It shouldn't compile.

[addons_zz]

I think this is why do not return strings on functions, and to use the approach `void ReturnVec( &vector[], vectorSize )`. Here the `&` seems not to compile or be acceptable, it is just to enforce pass by reference than by value.

[asherkin]

Arrays are always pass-by-ref, it makes no sense to use & with an array param.

[Grey83]

abrandnewday, &bool:bVal in the old syntax equal bool &bVal in the new syntax

[klippy]

Originally Posted by abrandnewday Ah, so I had to move the ampersand. Shit. Guess I gotta go through some things I've converted and figure out where I've removed ampersands. What does the ampersand even mean when used like that? Is it something that would result in bad things if I was to use a plugin without those ampersands?

It means that the parameter is passed by reference, not by value which is the default behavior.

PHP Code:

// Pass by value
void SetTo42(int val)
{
    val = 42;
}

// Pass by reference
void SetTo42Ref(int &val)
{
    val = 42;
}

int val = 1337;

SetTo42(val);
// "val" is still 1337
SetTo42Ref(val);
// "val" is now 42 


Also, you should't pass by reference whenever you can, only where you need it.