What are labels in c language?

Answer 1

Labels in C are used for CASE statements and for GOTOs (many people forget that C has GOTOs). The syntax goes like this:

if (some_condition) { goto MyGotoLabel; }

...

...

MyGotoLabel:

...

...

switch (MyVariable) {

case 1:

...

break;

case 2:

...

break;

default:

...

}

As you can see, both GOTO and CASE labels use a colon, which is a giveaway that they both really do the same thing. The switch/case statement is more structured than the goto, since it branches out from a single point and cannot go backwards and the range of where it can branch to is more clearly delineated, so it's a less-bad goto. But it's really still a goto.

Note that, unlike most interpreted C-based languages, C can only use a constant integer value (or a preprocessor macro that evaluates to a constant integer value) for a case label.