Spaghetti code

Spaghetti code is a pejorative term for code with a complex and tangled control structure, especially one using many GOTOs, exceptions, or other "unstructured" branching constructs. It is named after spaghetti because a diagram of program flow tends to look like that. Nowadays it is preferable to use so-called structured programming.

Also called kangaroo code because such code has so many jumps in it.

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This article (or an earlier version of it) contains material from FOLDOC, used with permission.