http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=739145


in reply to GOTO or not GOTO

There are valid performance reasons for using goto in C: it compiles down to a single instruction and is the nicest way to build a state machine.

On the other hand, using goto in Perl is very slow: the interpreter has to walk up and down the optree to look for the label. Since Perl is so much slower anyway, you may as well use a dispatch table (of coderefs in a hash) instead, if it's a state machine you're after.

Anyway, getting back to the OP, an infinite loop (while (1) {...}) with an explicit break (last) is preferable to a goto back to the beginning, or a do while.

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