Labels as Values

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Labels as values

You can get the address of a label defined in the current function (or a containing function) with the unary operator, ‘&&’. The value has type void ‘*’. This value is a constant and can be used wherever a constant of that type is valid.

Use the following example, for instance.

    void *ptr;
    ...
    ptr = &&foo;

To use these values, you need to be able to jump to one. This is done with the computed goto statement, goto * exp; as in goto *ptr;. The analogous feature in FORTRAN is called an assigned goto, but that name seems inappropriate in C, where one can do more than simply store label addresses in label variables.

Any expression of type void * is allowed.

One way of using these constants is in initializing a static array that will serve as a jump table:

    static void *array[] = { &&foo, &&bar, &&hack };

Then you can select a label with indexing, as in the following example.

    goto *array[i];.

Note:
This does not check whether the subscript is in bounds—array indexing in C never does that.

Such an array of label values serves a purpose much like that of the switch statement. The switch statement is cleaner, so use that rather than an array unless the problem does not fit a switch statement very well.

Another use of label values is in an interpreter for threaded code. The labels within the interpreter function can be stored in the threaded code for super-fast dispatching.

You can use this mechanism to jump to code in a different function. If you do that, totally unpredictable things will happen. The best way to avoid this is to store the label address only in automatic variables and never pass it as an argument.

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