"continue" and "break" for static analysis

Posted by B. VB. on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by B. VB.
Published on 2012-05-17T16:50:25Z Indexed on 2012/06/20 21:23 UTC
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I know there have been a number of discussions of whether break and continue should be considered harmful generally (with the bottom line being - more or less - that it depends; in some cases they enhance clarity and readability, but in other cases they do not).

Suppose a new project is starting development, with plans for nightly builds including a run through a static analyzer. Should it be part of the coding guidelines for the project to avoid (or strongly discourage) the use of continue and break, even if it can sacrifice a little readability and require excessive indentation? I'm most interested in how this applies to C code.

Essentially, can the use of these control operators significantly complicate the static analysis of the code possibly resulting in additional false negatives, that would otherwise register a potential fault if break or continue were not used?

(Of course a complete static analysis proving the correctness of an aribtrary program is an undecidable proposition, so please keep responses about any hands-on experience with this you have, and not on theoretical impossibilities)

Thanks in advance!

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