[randomdata]

You certainly wouldn't be the first to hold that view.

However, Dijkstra accepts abortion clauses, which is what return really is (it is not an exit clause). My take is that his argument is that an unbridled go to is too primitive and that he believed go to statements should be bridled by additional structure that help describe the process, not that go to should be avoided entirely.

While I think we can agree that return is go to, it is a bridled go to. It strictly limits what a programmer can do, avoiding the mess Dijkstra claims an unbridled go to promotes. It is predictable and understandable, clearly describing the intent.

Exception handlers have no such strictness. It is not clear, without studying the program in its entirety, where your code will end up. That can be a good tradeoff when you are dealing with exceptions. The only reasonable response to encountering an exception is to ultimately crash, so at that point who cares? But, indeed, using exception handlers for control flow (e.g. passing errors around) is considered harmful.

[bazoom42]

> You certainly wouldn't be the first to hold that view.

It is not my view. I happen to disagree with Dijkstra on that point.

[randomdata]

View of what Dijkstra said. How one feels about the subject has no meaning nor relevance to the discussion.