gotounntaksbehandling

Gotounntaksbehandling refers to the practice of using goto statements to manage error handling and resource cleanup in programming. The term combines the keyword goto with unntaksbehandling (exception handling) and is discussed in historical and practical contexts within Norwegian and broader programming literature.

In languages without built-in structured exception handling, developers sometimes jump to a centralized error-handling or cleanup block using goto. The common pattern performs a sequence of operations and, on any failure, transfers control to a cleanup section that releases resources and returns an error code. While this approach can reduce duplication of cleanup code, it creates non-linear control flow and can lead to code that is difficult to read and maintain, sometimes described as spaghetti code.

The technique is especially associated with C and other low-level languages where exceptions are absent or avoided for performance reasons. A typical pattern is to use goto cleanup as soon as an error is detected. An example might be: function() { Resource* r = acquire(); if (r == NULL) return ERROR; if (doStep1(r) != 0) goto cleanup; if (doStep2(r) != 0) goto cleanup; int result = OK; cleanup: if (r) release(r); return result; }

Alternatives and modern practice favor structured exception handling (try/catch/finally) or explicit result types (such as Result or Either) to separate error handling from main logic. Resource management patterns like RAII in C++ or the use of smart pointers reduce the need for goto-based cleanup. When goto is used, it is typically restricted to a single cleanup label to minimize complexity and improve readability.