Labels in Java - bad practice?

Question

Why using labels in Java is a bad practice? I cant find a reason. All explanations - you shouldn't use it just because you shouldn't.

Answer 1

It's difficult to read code containing breaks to a label. Also, a label can be accidentally moved, or code inserted at an incorrect location with respect to a label. The compiler is not able to warn you of these effects since the code remains syntactically valid.

Code that's difficult to read is difficult to maintain. Bugs will inevitably creep in.

Other control structures (break, continue, while, for, etc.) don't suffer from this.

Note that a switch to a label doesn't suffer from these effects either: the structure of a switch block is well-defined.

The most sensible alternative to breaking out of a nested loop is to recast the code to a function and use return. You also get the added benefit of being able (potentially) to return a value back to the caller.