Editing Line number (section)

==Line numbers and GOTOs==
In "unstructured" programming languages such as [[BASIC]], line numbers were used to specify the targets of [[branch (computer science)|branching statements]]. For example:

<syntaxhighlight lang="basic">
1 S=0: N=-1
2 INPUT "ENTER A NUMBER TO ADD, OR 0 TO END"; I
3 S=S+I: N=N+1: IF I<>0 THEN GOTO 2
4 PRINT "SUM="; S: PRINT "AVERAGE="; S/N
</syntaxhighlight>

[[GOTO]]-style branching can lead to the development of [[spaghetti code]]. (See [[Considered harmful]], [[Structured programming]].) Even in some later versions of BASIC that still mandated line numbers, the use of line number-controlled GOTOs was phased out whenever possible in favor of cleaner constructs such as the [[for loop]] and [[while loop]].

Many modern languages (including [[C (programming language)|C]] and [[C++]]) include a version of the GOTO statement; however, in these languages the target of a GOTO is specified by a [[line label]] instead of a line number.