What is the point of allowing labels in Java when goto is not available? Is there some other way of using/referencing labels that I am unaware of?

break. One usecase: you have loops nested 3 deep, and you want to end it all when you find something. You label the outermost loop "exit", and then say "break exit;"

I think continue can use labels, too. (EDITED)

Forgive me but this is going to be a bit off topic. I think it's considered poor taste when a hacker decides to utilize nested loops 3 levels deep.

Sometimes you might have no other choice? I think there are more important things to worry about than this.

oh... the height of silliness...

I'm not sure why this is a quirk. The reader has overloaded the meaning of an identifier followed by a colon and a string following two slashes. All inputs must be considered in context. A bare URL has no meaning in Java, so the given construct must not be a URL if it parses and does not produce an error.

I mean, are we expecting the parser to output "You didn't meant to put a URL on line X"?