Today I tested something that jnthn++ and I had discussed during a walk in the non-tourist parts of Riga after Baltic Perl Workshop.

$ cat test-goto
Q:PIR {
  line_10:
};

say "OH HAI!";

Q:PIR {
  goto line_10
}

$ perl6 test-goto
OH HAI!
OH HAI!
OH HAI!
OH HAI!
[...]

Oh. My. Wow.

The 1980's called; they want their infinitely looping toy BASIC idiom back.

I half-expected that not to work, but I'm glad it does. I can even imagine it being of actual, code-simplifying use in some applications. The reports of the harmfulness of GOTO have been greatly exaggerated, if you ask me. Like everything else, the goto keyword shouldn't be overused, but a well-placed goto LABEL can actually improve readability. Often these masquerade as next LABEL or last LABEL or redo LABEL in Perl loops. But those are gotos with a nicer accent, a briefcase, and a better salary.

Unfortunately, the trick doesn't take us very far. Since we're using PIR gotos, we can only jump around within the same sub. Not just the same Perl 6 sub, that is, but the same PIR sub. Since every block in Perl 6 corresponds to a sub in PIR, we can't jump outside of the block.

$ cat test-goto-loop
loop {
    say "OH HAI!";
    Q:PIR {
      goto line_10
    }
}

Q:PIR {
  line_10:
};

$ perl6 test-goto-loop
e_pbc_emit: no label offset defined for 'line_10'
in Main (file <unknown>, line <unknown>)

Well, that certainly makes it less useful. Shame.

Now, how about them PIR-based continuations...? ☺