To use goto or not?

Question

This question may sound cliched, but I am in a situation here.

I am trying to implement a finite state automaton to parse a certain string in C. As I started writin

Answer 1

I don't know your specific code, but is there a reason something like this:

typedef enum {
    STATE1, STATE2, STATE3
} myState_e;

void myFsm(void)
{
    myState_e State = STATE1;

    while(1)
    {
        switch(State)
        {
            case STATE1:
                State = STATE2;
                break;
            case STATE2:
                State = STATE3;
                break;
            case STATE3:
                State = STATE1;
                break;
        }
    }
}

wouldn't work for you? It doesn't use goto, and is relatively easy to follow.

Edit: All those State = fragments violate DRY, so I might instead do something like:

typedef int (*myStateFn_t)(int OldState);

int myStateFn_Reset(int OldState, void *ObjP);
int myStateFn_Start(int OldState, void *ObjP);
int myStateFn_Process(int OldState, void *ObjP);

myStateFn_t myStateFns[] = {
#define MY_STATE_RESET 0
   myStateFn_Reset,
#define MY_STATE_START 1
   myStateFn_Start,
#define MY_STATE_PROCESS 2
   myStateFn_Process
}

int myStateFn_Reset(int OldState, void *ObjP)
{
    return shouldStart(ObjP) ? MY_STATE_START : MY_STATE_RESET;
}

int myStateFn_Start(int OldState, void *ObjP)
{
    resetState(ObjP);
    return MY_STATE_PROCESS;
}

int myStateFn_Process(int OldState, void *ObjP)
{
    return (process(ObjP) == DONE) ? MY_STATE_RESET : MY_STATE_PROCESS;
}

int stateValid(int StateFnSize, int State)
{
    return (State >= 0 && State < StateFnSize);
}

int stateFnRunOne(myStateFn_t StateFns, int StateFnSize, int State, void *ObjP)
{
    return StateFns[OldState])(State, ObjP);
}

void stateFnRun(myStateFn_t StateFns, int StateFnSize, int CurState, void *ObjP)
{
    int NextState;

    while(stateValid(CurState))
    {
        NextState = stateFnRunOne(StateFns, StateFnSize, CurState, ObjP);
        if(! stateValid(NextState))
            LOG_THIS(CurState, NextState);
        CurState = NextState;
    }
}

which is, of course, much longer than the first attempt (funny thing about DRY). But it's also more robust - failure to return the state from one of the state functions will result in a compiler warning, rather than silently ignore a missing State = in the earlier code.