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 OUTERLOOP;     //...more code } 

I was wondering what the common convention for the labels was. All caps? first cap?

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.