Goto

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An instruction in some programming languages that transfers program control directly to a labeled point in the code
2. A statement in certain programming languages that makes execution jump unconditionally to a marked location elsewhere in the program
3. A low-level command that redirects the flow of a computer program straight to a specified label, skipping intervening instructions

Etymology: The word is a plain English phrase turned into a programming keyword. "Go to" meant exactly what it says: move to a particular place. Programmers adopted it as a command that tells a program to jump from its current position straight to a labeled line of code, skipping whatever comes between. Written in capitals, GOTO became the name of this instruction in many early languages, and the lowercase form is simply the same word in ordinary spelling. The idea is older than the name. The jump is the basic mechanism underneath a computer's processor, so early programmers used it constantly to build loops and branches. Its popularity eventually became a problem, because jumps scattered across a program made it hard to follow what would happen next, which is why later languages built structured alternatives like loops and conditionals.

Synonyms: jump, branch