The goto Statement

The goto statement unconditionally transfers control to the statement labeled by the specified identifier.

goto identifier;

Remarks

The labeled statement designated by identifier must be in the current function. All identifier names are members of an internal namespace and therefore do not interfere with other identifiers.

A statement label is meaningful only to a goto statement; otherwise, statement labels are ignored. Labels cannot be redeclared.

It is good programming style to use the break, continue, and return statements instead of the goto statement whenever possible. However, because the break statement exits from only one level of a loop, you might have to use a goto statement to exit a deeply nested loop.

For more information about labels and the goto statement, see Labeled Statements and Using Labels with the goto Statement.

Example

In this example, a goto statement transfers control to the point labeled stop when i equals 3.

// goto_statement.cpp
#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
    int i, j;

    for ( i = 0; i < 10; i++ )
    {
        printf_s( "Outer loop executing. i = %d\n", i );
        for ( j = 0; j < 2; j++ )
        {
            printf_s( " Inner loop executing. j = %d\n", j );
            if ( i == 3 )
                goto stop;
        }
    }

    // This message does not print: 
    printf_s( "Loop exited. i = %d\n", i );
    
    stop: 
    printf_s( "Jumped to stop. i = %d\n", i );
}

Outer loop executing. i = 0 Inner loop executing. j = 0 Inner loop executing. j = 1 Outer loop executing. i = 1 Inner loop executing. j = 0 Inner loop executing. j = 1 Outer loop executing. i = 2 Inner loop executing. j = 0 Inner loop executing. j = 1 Outer loop executing. i = 3 Inner loop executing. j = 0 Jumped to stop. i = 3

See Also

Reference

Jump Statements (C+)

C++ Keywords

Change History

Date	History	Reason
October 2008	Fixed invalid styles.	Customer feedback.