Re: [boost] Re: Semaphores?

From: Greg Colvin (greg_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-06-03 23:55:32

At 07:50 PM 06/03/2002, you wrote:
>At 06:27 PM 5/25/2002, Jive Dadson wrote:
>>...  What is not clear to me is why some people call semaphores "BAD"
>>in all caps.  I've used them since 1979 without any disasters so far.
>
>It's somewhat like goto statements or global variables.  Some programmers used them for years without problems, and wondered what all the "structured-programming" fuss was all about.  But for most of us, staying clear of them reduced error rates and increased code maintainability.

Yep.  But goto still comes in handy.  I recall coding up a
double hashing algorithm from Knuth, which used some three
or four gotos.  One goto remained in my version, because
removing it required an extra test in the inner loop, which
slowed down the code some 10% or 15%.  When I left that job
I put in a comment saying "Knuth's goto -- don't remove".
I'm told it's still there.