Break from while loops after specific time

Projects Programming
13

Not necessarily.
If you are doing a whole series of transactions talking to say an external device and, if any of those transactions fail by getting stuck in a loop etc., you want to abandon the whole thing and start again, then this can be a use for "goto" as mentioned in post #2. You can set a timeout on the whole series. For example :

bool initiateSession() {
  const uint32_t timeoutMs = 4000 ;
  uint32_t startAtMs = millis() ;

  while ( true ) {
    if ( millis() - startAtMs > timeoutMs ) goto errorLabel ;
    /*
        do activity 1 here. when OK issue break
    */
  }

   while ( true ) {
    if ( millis() - startAtMs > timeoutMs ) goto errorLabel ;
    /*
        do activity 2 here. when OK issue break
    */
  }

  return true ;  // OK

errorLabel :
  // handle error here. Issue error message etc.
  return false ;  // bad
}