Java Coding standard / best practices - naming convention for break/continue labels

Question

Sometimes a labeled break or continue can make code a lot more readable.

OUTERLOOP: for ( ;/*stuff*/; ) {
    //...lots of code

    if ( isEnough() ) break         


        

Answer 1

I don't understand where this "don't use labels" rule comes from. When doing non-trivial looping logic, the test to break or continue isn't always neatly at the end of the surrounding block.

outer_loop:
for (...) {
  //  some code
  for (...) {
    //  some code
    if (...)
      continue outer_loop;
    //  more code
  }
  //  more code
}

Yes, cases like this do happen all the time. What are people suggesting I use instead? A boolean condition like this?

for (...) {
  //  some code
  boolean continueOuterLoop = false;
  for (...) {
    //  some code
    if (...) {
      continueOuterLoop = true;
      break;
    }
    //  more code
  }
  if (continueOuterLoop)
    continue;
  //  more code
}

Yuck! Refactoring it as a method doesn't alleviate that either:

boolean innerLoop (...) {
  for (...) {
    //  some code
    if (...) {
      return true;
    }
    //  more code
  }
  return false;
}

for (...) {
  //  some code
  if (innerLoop(...))
    continue;
  //  more code
}

Sure it's a little prettier, but it's still passing around a superfluous boolean. And if the inner loop modified local variables, refactoring it into a method isn't always the correct solution.

So why are you all against labels? Give me some solid reasons, and practical alternatives for the above case.