[rmckayfleming]

This is one of those problems that Tail Call Elimination cleanly addresses. The "obvious" approach to writing an FSM does exactly what you'd expect.

[hgsgm]

C does not guarantee tail call elimination.

But you can do the same with an event loop that cleanly avoids goto.

[IncRnd]

Nowadays you can direct clang to require tail-call elimination in C. [1] In gcc you can provide the optimization flag, -foptimize-sibling-calls, which is automatically selected at -O2, -O3, or -Os. [2]

[1] https://clang.llvm.org/docs/AttributeReference.html#musttail

[2] https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Optimize-Options.html

[dcow]

Not if you don't know how to write in only tail calls. Try explaining tail call elimination to one of these programmers learning how to write a state machine (=

[DonHopkins]

Gotos are great approach for writing a Flying Spaghetti Monster!