Re: Number of times I've used goto in Perl

[anonymized user 468275]

The problem one often faces is where at first sight standards and/or best practices conflict. In this case, there are at least three potentially conflicting factors that may need to be considered: 1) avoiding excessive nested blocks in terms of length and depth, 2) having a single point of return or exit from a routine or subroutine and 3) avoiding goto. Example:

sub fred {
# meeting all three requirements:-
    my ($t, $u, $v, $w, $x, $y) = @_;
    somelogger( 5, "fred", "start of fred");
    my $ok = method1($t);
    $ok &&= method2($u);
    my $pid = open my $ph, "/somewhere/program $v |";
    my $output = '';
    $ok &&= method3( <$ph>, \$output );
    close $ph;
    waitpid $ph,0;
    # and so on for functionality using $w, $x and $y (in worst case s
+cenario)

# if goto were used to jump to the exit point the
# label would have been here.
    if ($ok) {
        somelogger( 5, "fred", "fred completed successfully");
    }
    else {
        somelogger( 5, "fred", "error during fred");
    }
    return $ok;
}

The point is that if goto were avoided using ifs, there would be one nesting level per error condition. Using &&= enables the code to cascade (without extra nested blocks) to the end whenever an error occurs. But many might consider the &&= too techy for the average programmer. Any thoughts, alternatives?