GOTO function

This article is a stub and will be fleshed out when more information is available.

In Sharon's dream world of Harry Barker, a GOTO function is a powerful hack that can allow a hacker to travel through time. Patty McDongle allowed Harmony Stranger to borrow one at the start of her third year at Hollerith's as a means of doubling-up her schedule and attending conflicting classes scheduled at the same time. It also proved pivotal to rescuing both "Serious" Nick and Buckybits during the climax of "Harry Barker and the Prisoner of Angband".

To date, the only known use for a GOTO function is to travel backward in time. It is unknown if traveling to the future is possible, but it is likely very unwise. In either case, the process is incredibly dangerous and must be performed with the utmost caution, as disrupting the time line could lead to catastrophic paradoxes. Despite this, it appeared in "Prisoner of Angband" that the two time line threads worked in concert, as future-Harry and future-Harmony were able to influence past events, but only because their past selves had already witnessed the results.

One "scroll back" of the GOTO function appears to be roughly equivalent to an hour.

The GOTO function is analogous to the time turners of Harry Potter. It is also a reference to the dubious GOTO command or statemet in various high-level programming languages, which allow unconditional, one-way jumps in the logical flow of a program. Many modern developers see GOTO statements as inherently dangerous and easily abused or misused; however, GOTO-like constructs are often used in low-level languages like assembly or raw machine language, and high-level languages are often deconstructed during compilation such that other flow-control statements are implemented as GOTO-like branches.