On Mon, 30 Nov 2020, jason-tuhs@shalott.net wrote:

>
>> "The UNIX Command Language is the first-ever paper published on the Unix 
>> shell. It was written by Ken Thompson in 1976."
>> 
>> https://github.com/susam/tucl
>
> Thanks for that.
>
> This reminded me that the Thompson shell used goto for flow control, which I 
> had forgotten.
>
> Bourne commented on the omission of goto from the Bourne shell, "I eliminated 
> goto in favour of flow control primitives like if and for. This was also 
> considered rather radical departure from the existing practice."
>
> Was this decision contentious at all?  Was there a specific reason for goto's 
> exclusion in the Bourne shell?
>
>
> Thanks.
>
>
> -Jason

My personal opinion is that the way the Bourne shell handled flow control 
is a lot easier to code for (since I wrote a version of COMMAND.COM, and 
it has to have a "goto" command, and all the hairiness that goes with 
needing to be able to random-seek a shell script).

-uso.